Rush Hour

There was a fundraising event at a toy store in our town, where 20% of the proceeds of all sales made between 6-8pm last night would benefit the 1st grade classes at my children's school (Jared is in 1st grade). The 1st grade teachers were at the store helping to welcome customers, and the place was PACKED with 1st grade families.

I found some things that I was really interested in purchasing, only to discover they were WAY out of my price-range. Jared was disappointed to discover that mommy wasn't going to be buying him anything he wanted (though there WERE parents blowing hundreds of dollars in this place last night!!), but we finally chose this game:

(Thank you, Amazon, for supplying the picture!)


We bought the "Jr." version figuring it would work better for all three kids, even though Emily is already at the tail-end of the age range (6-8 years old). There are three or four levels of difficulty, so the game can be adapted to each child in our family. And adults can easily sit down and enjoy helping (or playing alone!).

In a nutshell, you choose a card, which shows you how to set up certain vehicle pieces on the board, and then without removing car pieces from the board, and only moving the cars frontwards or backwards (the way they would drive on an actual road), you have to maneuver them around the board to allow the ice cream truck to drive freely out the designated spot. And it all stores in a draw-string bag that doesn't take up much space. I think we're going to have a lot of fun with this game, and we were able to support the 1st grade classes through our purchase!

PS For those of you who have fancy cell phones that let you download games, I've heard this game is available, and very addicting.