Genre: Children’s Games
Recommended.
Bible Dominoes is similar to “regular” dominoes except that it uses thick cardboard cards, which have colors, patterns, numbers, and Bible story characters/animals drawn on each card half. There is consistency between the images. For instance, purple with a circle pattern could be zero, 0, or a blank; orange with a tear drop pattern is one, 1, or a single Bible story image; violet/blue with a wave pattern is two, 2, or two Bible images, and so forth. One at a time the players place down a new domino to match the ends of the images together.
There is also a little booklet that came with the game of quick summaries of some of the Bible stories. Our family was not too excited by this. The kids were already familiar with the stories, and just wanted to play the game. But the pictures on the cards do match the pamphlet, so it is helpful to read it to tell apart the different renditions of the characters. This also creates the connection between pictorial dominoes and Bible-specific dominoes. That is, how much the game reflects the Bible is in the parenting/teaching style of involvement. There could be more depth to this, but I like the open-endedness of being able to share the Bible stories in my own way with this as a prop.
My kids do like playing with the dominoes. My five year old (who was four when we received the game a few months ago) said, “Mom, I think this game is a little easy for me.” But he asks to play it nevertheless, and has a good time helping his younger brother, as well as asking many questions about the various characters and pictures.
My two and a half year old enjoys playing this even more. He is at the perfect age to find the game both fun and challenging. He is great at matching by color, but sometimes confused with recognizing the matching numbers as well, which provides a great learning opportunity. The cards are also big enough and sturdy enough not to be easily bent or broken by toddlers.
I received a complimentary copy of this game from Kregel Publications.
