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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 25 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
59 of 60 found the following review helpful:
 Worth its weight in silver Jun 25, 2011
By Nefri
One of the hardest things to do while trying to teach your child to read is keep his/her attention. Well this game offers the opportunity to do it. The little popcorns are cute and the box is exciting. The game LOOKS fun. I believe the instructions for the game are pretty straight up. You know, you pick one to read, and then he picks one to read. Whoever has the most when you get tired wins. Also, the instructions say that when a "POP" card is picked, the player loses all his cards. BAD IDEA. That will not make the game fun. Instead, when we find a "POP" card, everyone has to stand up and pop around the room like a popcorn. Now this makes reading the cards exciting. The normal player instructions are a little boring for my 4 year old, too. But throw in his noirsy trash truck that gets to haul off the popcorns he earns, and it becomes a blast for him. Add a few imaginary products (like pink elephants, dog paint, dust mite houses, whatever) that he can buy with his earned popcorn currency, and it gets even better. For an imaginary rabbit my son will read any card he can. Then he wants to read one to get the rabbit food, an imaginary collar, a rabbit hutch, and on and on. With this approach I get tired way before he does.
My son is 4 and is reading 1st grade level with absolute ease. This is mostly because of starfall.com and morestarfall.com , but these cards help him with the words that can't be sounded out so easily. These words have to be memorized... like the word "please" and "who" and "where" and "the". Other words in the game are: big, run, ran, if, to, today, what, then, well, ride, see, little, do, this, into, now, and, went, could, on, no, said, pretty, at, my, is, there, fun, all, say, are, under, some, soon, be, he, that, it, a, and an. There are 100 words in all, I think. We generally only play with about 15 at any one time, so there is repetition so he can remember them. I recommend this game if you plan on playing WITH your child, and often. There is no way a kid can learn anything from these all by himself or with another child.
16 of 18 found the following review helpful:
 Worth a fun play or two, but my son lost interest afterward. Aug 17, 2010
By M. J. Kenoyer
When I first bought this game, I thought it would be an ingenious way to help my learning-disabled son, who struggles with reading, with his sight words. We had fun for a few games, but my son lost interest after awhile. It seems that the overly repetitive nature of the game can be a turnoff for kids, even though repetition can be a good quality to have in learning in general. The way the game is structured, in that a red POP! piece of "popcorn" means the player who draws it has to return all his/her "earned" pieces to the box, means that many sight words can be drawn numerous times, only to be put back and drawn again, even if the box's pieces are mixed. This may be helpful with some early learners (I'm guessing very young children around 4 or 5 years old would fare better with this game), but my son quickly tired of it and wanted to turn to something else after just a few plays. I have to admit that I didn't blame him; there isn't a large variety of new words to hold either a parent's or a child's interest.
Advantages are that the game is compact and portable, and the pieces are fairly durable and easy to clean. That being said, use caution if you have very small children (toddlers and younger) who are still prone to putting things in their mouths, as the "popcorn pieces" seem like they are small enough to cause a choking hazard.
8 of 9 found the following review helpful:
 Pretty good. Mar 21, 2010
By Kate
"mom of 4 in nj"
My 4 year old son eagerly brought this to play with while his siblings had dance class. It wasn't THRILLING for him, but I can see us using it over time and working on learning the words. We made our own rules for the game since it was just the two of us.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
sight word fun Oct 17, 2010
By KM
"KM"
My daughter loves this game and is so proud of herself for knowing the words. Good way to introduce new words too. I told her teacher about it (1st grade) and she bought this for the classroom.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Super teaching tool Feb 26, 2011
By Madame Defarge
I am a kindergarten teacher and use this game with small groups to practice word wall words. We can play a quick game in as short as 5 minutes. Even my students who are struggling to read just a few high frequency words enjoy POP. It can be made easier or more challenging based on the words one includes in the popcorn cup. The words are printed on thick, glossy cardboard with one side colored to look like popped corn. After reading the word, I have my students use it in a sentence. They like to try to use all their pieces in a sentence.
It does practice reading words in isolation and the children love playing it.
See all 25 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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