Children love to discover the world with their hands. Even as toddlers they grab onto anything they possibly can with their curious fingers. Hasbro makes use of this universal connection between the hand and the brain to create an intuitive game that teaches children how to count.
Yes, math can be scary for kids, but when it comes to an ingenious classic board game designed for two to four preschoolers, numbers become friendly and fun. Hi-Ho! Cherry-O, from Winning Moves Games, under license by Hasbro is styled after the 1960 original, which has been around for more than 50 years.
Through this game, children learn basic skills in math—how to count, add, and subtract—simply by picking fruit from trees and filling their buckets. Since no reading is required, a 3-year-old can easily play the game.
Hi-Ho! Cherry-O will instantly light up your little one’s eyes with 44 brightly colored cherries ripe for the picking. The game also comes with a plastic board embedded with four trees and four buckets, and a fully assembled, colorful spinner.
To start, each player selects a tree and a bucket. The object of the game is to be the first player to pick 10 cherries from the tree and fill your bucket. Just spin the spinner and hope for options one, two, three or four to pick that amount of cherries and place them in your bucket. Fingers crossed you miss the bird, the dog, and the bucket-spill options on the spinner, which cause you to lose some or all of your cherries.
The game can be a thrill with two players, however the excitement of winning and losing cherries increases with more. Each number on the spinner explains the concept of addition and the dog or the spill teaches kids about subtraction.
Some of the most beautiful ideas in the world become popular because of their simplicity. Picking cherries from trees one-by-one to understand basic counting concepts is an excellent, timeless example, explaining why Hi-Ho! Cherry-O has been a winner in teaching kids how to count for decades.
