(Gifted)¦ During the summer holidays, school gave us a project to make a scrapbook about Brazil, Rio de Janeiro and the Rio Carnival. Autumn really enjoyed researching it in books at the library and watching videos online with me. One book we borrowed from the library had pictures of children from all around the world with various facts about their clothes, food and cultures. She absolutely loved it and insisted on us looking at it pretty much every day. Ever since, she’s had a real thirst for learning about other countries and cultures. Children of the World is a fantastic game for facilitating this interest! With a map of the world, it is also a great early start to teaching children about geography. With bright and cute illustrations, it’s a fun and interactive way to learn about the world and the people in it.
Setting Up
You need a fairly large space for this game board, as it’s bigger than some. I’d say set up takes around 5 minutes as there are cards to shuffle and quite a few pieces to place around the board.
Once you know what you’re doing, the game is very straightforward. However, the first time you play you will definitely want to have the rules on hand. It takes a little bit of getting your head around how and where the passport and stamps, travel discs, ticket tiles and cards all come into the game.
Playing the game
You move around the map with your character, answering questions as you go. There are 3 types of card, one of which can only be answered if you’re on the right continent. This helps to keep the tasks varied as you play. If you answer correctly, you can add a stamp to the passport. Meanwhile, each turn you take, you take 2 travel discs from the bag which tell you if you have to use or lose a ticket. When you fill the passport, everyone wins! With 3 of us playing, the game took around 20 minutes. You can play with as little as 2 players or as many as 6, which will make the game shorter or longer.
Another thing that can make the game shorter (and easier) is if you only play using half the passport stamps. If you like, there is also a version of the game that you can play without asking the questions. Although, in my opinion, the questions are a huge part of what make the game fun! It’s aimed at 5 – 10 year olds, but even I’ve learnt things from some of the cards!
What else we like about the game
The age range
A lot of board games don’t have a particularly long age range on them. This results in younger siblings not being able to join in and/or older siblings getting bored and not wanting to join in! However, Children of the World has an age range of 5-10. As such, when Reuben turns 5, Autumn will be 9, so they’ll both be able to enjoy it.
Everyone wins
When the passport is filled, everyone wins! This is great for children who hate losing games, or more likely, just not winning.
Funnily enough, the first time we played this, Autumn struggled to grasp the concept of there not being a ‘proper winner’ and got upset. However, she was far less upset than she is when someone else wins a game. Therefore, I’m still counting it as a win!
You can find Tactic Games stocked at the following retailers: https://games.tactic.net/en/retailers/. (I’ve spotted Children of the World stocked at both The Range and Mulberry Bush).
Disclosure: We were gifted the aforementioned game for the purpose of this review. As always, all views and opinions are honest and my own.