Kids•Reviews

Animal Upon Animal Junior – A First Game Review

Animal Upon Animal Junior is a dexterity game for young children. Taking the fun found in the family game Animal Upon Animal and sizing it perfectly for little hands.

With HABA’s excellent quality wooden pieces, it’s built to withstand whatever the littlest gamers can put it through while helping them learn to follow rules and increase their fine motor skills.

Overview of Animal Upon Animal Junior

Along with enjoying the games components through Free Play, there are three ways to play Animal Upon Animal Junior.

Stacking Animal Tower: This is a first stacking game. Players will flip over sun tiles, revealing an animal, and attempt to add that animal to the animal tower without knocking it over.

Colorful Raft Stack: This game adds additional rules and two animal towers. Players will roll a dice to determine which stack to add their animal to. A small amount of choice is given so kids can make decisions about which stack they would like to use.

Race Carl the Crab: This is a cooperative race. Players are trying to stack all of the animals before the wooden crab makes it to the end of the sun tile path.

What Do We Think?

Animal Upon Animal Junior is another great option for any child’s game collection.

The different ways to play included in the rules are great. Each game is quick so attention spans aren’t taxed too much. Out of all three included, my favorite is probably the Colorful Raft Stack as I enjoy players having the option to choose which stack to add their animal to. If one stack is higher, they might choose the smaller stack so to increase their chance of success. It’s small, but that’s perfect for this age. My kids’ favorite was probably racing the crab.

Don’t be surprised though if your child wants to just play with the game. Margot and Harry (2 and 4) love to get this out and free play, making up their own little game and/or story together.

When considering what to buy for the 2-4 aged child, I prefer this version to the original game.

These pieces are chunky and really easy to pick up and manipulate. My kids are able to have much more success stacking the animals on top of each other. When we play the normal game, they typically end up knocking the stack over due to the smaller nature of the game and the need for more precise movements. This can both be fun and frustrating for them.

Dexterity games for this age can be a great way to help kids develop those softer, more controlled movements.

With Animal Upon Animal Junior they’re able to both challenge their fine motor skills and succeed.

To pick up a copy of Animal Upon Animal Junior, click here.
Find this and all our favorite games on our Amazon Storefront.