Educational Insights makes a cool line of puzzles called Kanoodle. So far they have Kanoodle, Kanoodle Genius, Kanoodle Extreme, Kanoodle Duplexity, and now they have added Kanoodle JR. I own both Kanoodle and Kanoodle Genius (and love them!), so I was very happy to see a junior edition released. It's listed for ages 4 to 7. I am always happy to find puzzles for the younger folks. They deserve to have some good puzzling fun too!
Kanoodle JR is self contained. Everything you need to play is packed away inside. There is even a carrying handle!
Inside you will find the puzzle pieces and the challenge booklet.
There are 6 pieces of various colors. The orange piece is made out of 3 blocks. The blue, yellow and red pieces are made out of 4 blocks and are classic tetromino shapes. The green and pink pieces are made out of 5 blocks (pentominoes). These pieces fit into the 5x5 grid in a number of ways. How many ways did you ask? I am interested in that question too! I'm sure some code could be written to figure out how many unique ways these pieces can be fitted into the grid, but we'll leave that for someone else to solve!
What's really nice about Kanoodle JR is that they've come up with 3 different types of puzzles for kids to solve. The challenge booklet sets out the rules for each. It also contains the 60 challenges and an answer key.
Once you pick a challenge, you can fold the puzzle book back on itself and then slide it into the slot underneath the grid. This allows the puzzle to show through the open grid squares.
The first type of puzzle is called "Color-Match". There are 40 challenges for this type and are color coded in the booklet with the dark blue edge. The first couple of challenges have all the grid spaces filled with color. This is the simplest challenge and is really just practice in matching the shapes to the colored squares. It helps younger kids get a feel for how the puzzle works and how the shapes fit into the grid. As you move into the higher numbered challenges, more and more of the spaces are left blank. For these, puzzle solvers must figure out the orientation of the pieces so they all match the colored spaces shown and fit into the grid. The photo above shows challenge #27. It has 12 blank spots and is rated a 4 star challenge.
Here's how that challenge looks in progress. These don't pose much of a challenge to older folks like me, but I love that it is designed for younger kids and will get their creative and puzzling minds thinking. It's a gateway puzzle!
The second type of puzzle is the "Path" puzzle. These challenges show an object, its path, and a goal. You must cover all the other tiles with a subset of the playing pieces. It does give clues, as in the above photo of challenge #45. The dinosaur must find a path to the palm tree. The outside squares that need to be filled have some colored clues. Thus the green piece must fit over the green volcano in some way.
When the pieces have been placed correctly, the path is clear for the dino to find its way to the tree. There are 10 puzzles of this type included in the booklet, and they have a purple edge.
The last type of puzzle is the "Wall" puzzle. The goal here is to create a wall between the two types of objects shown. Challenge #57 shown above needs a wall to keep the dog away from the cats. We think they must be vicious attack cats!
And here's how the completed challenge looks. There are 10 puzzles of this type which have a green edge. These challenges also use just a subset of the pieces, so part of the challenge is figuring out which pieces to use. We did find alternate solutions to some of these challenges.
I think this is a brilliant puzzle. It's just perfect for kids in the suggested age range and hopefully gets them hooked on puzzles!
Stay tuned to this blog...I have some alternate challenges for Kanoodle JR that I'll be posting soon. That will give your kids 20 extra challenges to solve!
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