*DISCLOSURE* Thank you to Thames and Kosmos for providing product samples in order to facilitate this post. All thoughts are strictly my own.
If you've been following along our gift guide, you probably know that we love giving games as gifts during the holiday season. Thames and Kosmos is known for their great selection of games that are both fun and educational and today we are going to share some of our newest favorites that would make excellent gifts for middle grade kiddos and teens this year!
EXIT: The Game is a new series of party games for up to four players that offers a unique, unforgettable gaming experience. These games allow you to bring the excitement, intensity, and team spirit of an escape room to your living room. In each EXIT game, your team starts out locked in an imaginary room, or trapped somewhere. You must solve a series of riddles and puzzles in order to unlock doors and reveal new riddles. Each correct solution brings you to another riddle and eventually to freedom. The clock is ticking: You must solve all of the puzzles as fast as you can because the faster your team escapes the room and the fewer hints you use along the way, the more points you earn. Get ready to test your creative problem solving and logical thinking skills, because the rulebook in an EXIT game doesn’t reveal all the rules like in other games. After the rulebook gets you started, it’s up to your team to discover for itself how the rooms look, what the clues are, how to decipher them, and how to escape.
If you love escape rooms and want to bring the fun home, this is a great option. You can only use each game once, but at a price of $14.95, this is a way cheaper option than taking the whole family to an actual escape room. Plus, they have some really fun themes to choose from.
In Brainwaves: The Wise Whale, players lay nine cards showing different colorful sea creatures face down after trying to memorize which creatures are on which cards. During a player’s turn, they reveal a new card from the deck. Then, they must reveal a card that matches either the creature or the color on this new card. If they do, they claim this card, and then lay out a new card face down in its place. Whoever collects the most cards wins.
Another great game for the whole family, Brain Waves is like memory, but elevated. A great way to train your brain and another steal of a deal at just $14.95.
Jumpstart your study of mechanical physics by learning all about simple machines and how they’re used to make complex tasks easier to do. The seesaw at the playground, the wheelbarrow in your backyard, the flagpole in front of your school — all of these are examples of simple machines in the real world! So start building, investigating, and experimenting to discover how physics is all around us.
Through 26 model-building exercises, you’ll investigate all six classic simple machines — wheels and axles, levers, pulleys, inclined planes, screws, and wedges — as well as gears. Start off with simple models to gain a firm understanding of the basic principles at play, and then move onto larger, more complex models to push the machines harder and see how they can work together.
This kit also includes is a specially designed spring scale so that you can measure how the machines change the direction and magnitude of forces, making work easier to do.
Mechanically minded D really enjoyed this kit! He is 11 and really interested in how things work, so this was a great kit to get those simple machine principals physically in his hands to experiment with.
If you have inquisitive kiddos on your gift giving list this holiday season, we would highly recommend checking out Thames and Kosmos for a wonderful selection of games and hands on kits that will inspire creativity and spark curiosity for years to come!
Disclosure: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
