It can be difficult to teach toddlers about numbers and counting without boring them yet Diego 123 Game allows parents and preschool teachers to do just that. With the familiar cartoon character from Nick Jr., Diego, and his ever-present animals, the 123 animal matching game helps young children learn more about Earth's animals as well as numbers in a fun way.
How Go Diego Go! 123 Animal Game is Set Up
Diego 123 is a simple game format which parents will appreciate, since it means there aren't many pieces to clean up, and children will appreciate since it is an easy game to learn. Each player gets his own gameboard with ten animal squares. There are four gameboards in total and thus, 40 different animals featured in the game. 40 game pieces, one for each individual animal go into a felt, drawstring bag making clean up and storage a cinch.
The animal gameboards each cover one of four separate animal categories:
- Flyers
- Climbers
- Swimmers
- Walkers
Diego 123 Basic Game Rules and How-To's
Once each child has one of the four gameboards for his own, and the 40 animal pieces are mixed up in the bag, the play can begin. Starting with the youngest child, something the author's 2 year old daughter appreciated, each child draws one animal token piece out of the bag. If the token matches one of the animal squares on the child's gameboard she places the token on the correct animal space. This is the best time to go over the counting with your child, "Oh! You have a piece with four sea turtles. One, two, three, four. Are there four sea turtles on your board?"
If the child's drawn animal token does not match any of the squares on her gameboard, but it matches one of the squares on another players gameboard she will give the token to that player. Again - a great time to reinforce the animal categories, "Your gameboard only has climbers on it. Who has the swimmers?"
Animals Featured in the Diego 123 Game
In the flyers category the animals featured are:
- Condor
- Gray Hawks
- Harpy Eagles
- Owls
- Toucans
- Tanagers
- Jay Birds
- Macaws
- Blue Morpho Butterflies
- Bees
In the Climbers animal category the creatures highlighted are:
- Sloth
- Bobo Brothers
- Howler Monkeys
- Spider Monkeys
- Squirrel Monkeys
- Tree Boas
- Iguanas
- Pygmy Marmosets
- Red-Eyed Tree Frogs
- Lizards
In the Swimmers category the animals featured are:
- Whale
- Dolphins
- Harbor Seals
- Sea Turtles
- Penguins
- River Otters
- Caimans
- Jellyfish
- Starfish
- Seahorses
In the Walkers category these ten animals are shown:
- Llama
- Jaguars
- Pumas
- Spectacled Bears
- Maned Wolves
- Anteaters
- Tapirs
- Coatis
- Capybaras
- Chinchillas
Overall Impressions and Game Usage
If your preschooler can already count to 10 and has absolutely no interest in animals, then there might be other toddler game options for you. Other than that, the author found the game to be exciting to her children enabling lots of conversation about the different types of animals and what they can do. Children as young as 2 years old were able to play the game with adult supervision and a little bit of help, though the manufacturer's minimum age listed 3 years. Go Diego Go! 123 Animal Game would be a fun game addition for any family with young children.
Angela England - Angela England is a problogger, mother of four (yes I know what causes that), speaker, teacher, labor doula, gardener and so much more.
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