Matchstick

Author: Matt

  • LEGO Scooby-Doo and the Haunted Isle

    My kids didn’t even know who Scooby-Doo was before stumbling across this game while looking for Lego-related apps. The game is rated 10+ but we tried it anyway and I haven’t seen anything particularly ‘mature’ about it and our 4-year-old enjoys it without being scared (and this is someone who is sometimes scared of things […]

  • Once a Pawn a Time

    [amazon_link asins=’B000OT2816′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’matchstickkidboo’ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’2b38f149-c643-11e7-be85-93fa2b289994′] I’ve heard of chess prodigies as young as 6 and have played chess against 6- and 7-year-olds who knew what they were doing and were even able to beat me (although I’m not a great player). So I was eager to introduce chess to our oldest at that age. […]

  • Star Trek – The Animated Series

    [amazon_link asins=’B000HEWEJ4′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’matchstickkidboo’ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’3c39339d-b9aa-11e7-98a6-c5b01cd96078′] A lot of cartoons aimed at kids are not very good. They are either insipid, appealing only to toddlers, or have too much adult humor, or are essentially long advertisements. So I sometimes look for older cartoons, hoping that they will transcend, but boy oh boy are they violent. […]

  • Count Your Chickens

    [amazon_link asins=’B004HVKAAS’ template=’ProductAd’ store=’matchstickkidboo’ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’83f6b556-b9a7-11e7-8523-33b45c870638′] Peaceable Kingdom has something of a corner on the market for ‘cooperative games’. These are games where everyone playing either wins together or loses together. There are no individual winners or losers. I had a conversation with a friend a while ago and he was saying how important playing […]

  • Puss in Book

    One of the characters in the movie Shrek was Puss in Boots, a character that dates back to 16th-century Italy. Puss got his own spin-off movie, and then a few more, and now Netflix has launched a novel format of choose-your-own adventure-style storytelling. A clip of the video plays and then the character asks the […]

  • Bad Lip Reading Star Wars Songs

    BLR is a YouTube phenomenon. A guy dubs over news clips and videos with silly nonsense and sometimes songs. The songs are very, very good – well-composed, well-performed and sung, and slickly produced. His re-dubs of music videos are better than the originals. Not all of them are particularly kid-friendly, but most are. In 2016, […]

  • Little Robot

    [amazon_link asins=’1626720800′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’matchstickkidboo’ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’01bcca67-b825-11e7-99d4-65314339f12e’] We got this from the library, which has a lot of graphic novels and other quasi-comic books – a lot more than when I was a kid, but back then the genres were more explicitly separated (novels OR picture books OR comics). Little Robot has a lot of panels […]

  • KidsTV123

    We try to restrict ‘screen time’ to weekends and when we do let the kids use our phones or the iPad we try to limit video usage to PBS Kids, Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime. YouTube is a special case because of the quantity of ads, but also because of the content of the ads, […]

  • The Camelback Dogs!

    [amazon_link asins=’1570614202′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’matchstickkidboo’ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’f2a40203-a94d-11e7-b7c5-17a1ad61d7dd’] This seemed like a very odd book when I first read it to the kids after receiving it as a gift, but we’ve all grown fond of it. This one does not get read as frequently as some others on our shelves, but when we do read it the […]

  • Block Craft 3D

    This is essentially a clone of Minecraft and the main reason to play this is if you want to play Minecraft but don’t want to pay for it. It’s a pretty faithful copy with some slight differences and is close enough to the original that even kids who have played real Minecraft should have fun […]