Cartoon It! A Fun Drawing Game for Kids

©Thinkfun

I will not lie up front. I am a horrible artist. Awful. Always have been and I think I always will be. Though I can be creative in my job in different ways and I have other special talents where I’m more athletic in nature, I do think some people are just not blessed with drawing ability. I was so psyched when I recently found the game Morphology which uses actual objects to create pictures, because though I have enjoyed playing Pictionary with family and friends, I often wonder if anyone will be able to quickly decipher my horrible scribbles.

When Thinkfun contacted me to review their memory game Cartoon It! I was really curious to see how the children I work with would like it, since any type of drawing that’s challenging can prompt some type of forward flopping on the table, or pleas to play a different game.  Just like I know I’m a horrible artist, kids know their strengths and weaknesses, too.

Cartoon It! is a fun, drawing game for kids. 2-6 children can play together, and it is recommended for kids ages 6 and up. The game includes 50 character cards.  For 30 seconds kids look at the card and try to remember all the details of the picture. Then, they turn the character card face down and the Features Board is opened. The Features Board has 6 different options for head shape, eyes, ears, nose, mouth and special effects (bowtie, earring, scarf, etc.). Using pencil and paper, the children use the Features Board to draw the picture from their character card as best as they can from memory. After finishing, the players switch papers with another player who compares their character card with the drawing and scores 1 point for each feature that was drawn correctly.
Being an occupational therapist, it’s my job to evaluate a child’s visual motor skills, or the ability to copy basic shape designs and letters with pencil and paper. Some children have a lot of difficulty looking at a picture and copying it with the same size and orientation.  This can also translate into difficulty with art class and drawing, and if you are the parent who browses the artwork in the school hallway, these types of children rely on basic stick figures and their drawings often look much more immature when you compare them to same aged peers.

So many children have difficulty paying attention to small details that they do not deem relevant and this game has been so great at really encouraging kids to look at and remember minor details.  This type of attention is really helpful for older children so they can learn to edit and proofread their written work, such as comparing a rough draft to a final draft. It also helps them to develop strategies to assist their memory. Some children will talk out loud about the features, others will use their fingers to trace the card and then look back at the features board to assign a sequence to help their memory. Either way, despite whether kids have a basic drawing ability or not, all of them have been successful with this game and request to play it each week, or multiple rounds in a row. I myself was only able to get 3 or 4 out of the possible 6 points when I first began playing the game, so it’s a great family game as well. To take the game even further, we have even used the character cards and drawings to develop stories featuring their character, by also giving them names, occupations and interests.

ThinkFun provided this game free to facilitate this review. The opinions are my own.

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