Product Description

What a great way for kids to play America's favorite word game! Kid-sized words and colorful pictures make it fun to match letter tiles to words on the grid. Players collect scoring chips for completing words. When all of the tiles are played, the one with the most chips wins! The advanced side of the game board features an open grid where kids can create their own words, Scrabble-style! For 2 to 4 players. Game includes: 2-sided game board, 101 letter tiles, 44 scoring chips and rules.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15901 in Toys & Games
• Brand: Hasbro
• Model: 4039 S5
• Dimensions: 10.60" h x 10.30" w x 2.20" l, 1.70 pounds

Features

• Introduces young children to the classic word-forming game
• Players work to match letters printed on the board, receiving points for finishing each word
• When all of the tiles are played, the one with the most chips wins
• The advanced side of the game board features a basic version of Scrabble with simple scoring rules
• For 2 to 4 players

Editorial Review
If there's any game out there that normally makes little kids feel left out, it's Scrabble, the word game that's usually played by adults and older kids. But Scrabble Junior is a great way to introduce young children to the game and get them interested in how words are formed. In the beginner game, specially developed for younger kids, players draw seven tiles from a pool, then work to match letters to the ones printed on the board. As they work through their tiles, they spell out the words, one letter at a time, and receive points for finishing each word. By the end of the game, they'll have used over a hundred letters to work through a variety of different words. On the other side of the board there is a basic version of the classic Scrabble game with simple scoring rules. Once your children master the advanced game, you might be surprised to see that they're ready to take you on in a match of the original Scrabble. Just be prepared to lose gracefully. --John Longenbaugh

From the Manufacturer
For the little vocabulary-lover in your family: this fun word-and-picture version lets kids match the picture words with letter tiles! More experienced players can form their own words on the reverse side of the board.

Customer Reviews

A good game for beginning readers
I played this game with three kids (5, 6, and 7 )for a week and we all loved it. Some games do not translate well into junior version, but this one is well done. The board has two sides. One side, the easier side, has pre-printed words. Players try to put the letters they have picked onto the board following some very simple and straight-forward rules. There are strategies invovled (such as trying to be the one to put the last letter into a word--one gets a point for completing a word). This part is best for kids 5 to 7 or 8.

The other side of the board is similar to the regular Scrabble board (without the doubling and tripling parts). One can form words without the constraint of pre-printed words. A kid who reads and writes well (7 or 8 year olds, for example), can do well with it.

I like this game because it gives kids a taste of the Scrabble game without making them work unnecessarily too long and too hard at it. (I tried using the standard board with kids. It worked for only a little while.)

All in all, a good game to have, even with the cardboard lettering.

Not a total loss
This was a gift for my daughter's 5th birthday, and, though it's age-appropriate, we've found that the "Junior" side of the board to be terribly limiting.

There are only about ten words that kids can work to spell, and these are a predictably condescending mix of "easy words" like WATER and GOAT, along with "fun words" like ARCADE, CANDY and TELEVISION. If you play this game a lot, you're stuck spelling the same words over and over, so there's little learning value or reinforcement of new vocabulary.

The other side of the board can be used for a more normal Scrabble experience, but I find my 5-year-old, though she's reading, is a little young for that. My only other complaint is that all the tiles and "points" chips this game uses are thick cardboard, which means that if they sneak into the washing machine, they're toast (I know this from tragic personal experience).

All in all, this game isn't an outright loss, but I was expecting better from a big games company.

Recommended Ages: 4 to 6 years old ONLY (my 6-year old, an avid reader, is bored to tears with this game)

Playability on Shabbat: YES!!! (no batteries, electronics or writing)

Kind of deficient
I was excited at the prospect of a scrabble game I could play with the little children I babysit for. Unfortunately, this game relied neither on the luck that evens the playing field nor a skill a young child could pick up quickly enough to start winning enough. So unless I play dumb, I wind up winning each time. Also, I found the layout of the game to be especially poor for two reasons. First, as the featured reviewer noted, the cartoony pictures obscure the first letters of words. Second, the choice of words is so poor, it slows down the spelling process, especially at the beginning, when the variety of options is very limited. It seems the creators of the game just played a few rounds of Scrabble (TM) and said "Hey, this one looks good for kids" and didn't do any playtesting. So in conclusion, rather than looking at an educational game designed for children, what we have is a recognizable brand name that has been adapted to take advantage of a heretofore unregocnized market share. In other words, just trying to make a quick few bucks.