"Can we play Match a Track?" These are the words out of my four year old's mouth on a nearly daily basis. Memory games are a staple of a young gamer's diet. You can find them everywhere in varying levels of quality and topics.
I fell in love with this series of memory game this spring. They are highly educational and have beautiful artwork. The fact that the matches are not identical cards gives the games a different feel as well.
The tot has Match a Track. He loves to look at his "research" to see which paw print got turned up. The rule book has pictures of the animals with their matching track. He is just four and doesn't get many matches but the biggest fun for him is looking up the animals in the book. He wants to get Match These Bones next. It has you matching "living" dinosaurs to their fossilized skeletons.
The Kiddo has Match a Leaf. He is interested in wilderness survival and plant identification right now. The game has him matching a leaf with the tree it belongs to. The rule book also contains information about each tree and led to some research of his own.
These are matching games that no one in the family minds digging out of the game collection on a regular basis. Their small size and price make it easy to take with on a trip too. We are very interested in trying out some of the other versions. I am particularly interested in the Match a Pair of Birds game that has you matching male birds to female. That could be a fun way to identify some birds in real nature too.