Brain Blox Wooden Building Planks Review

My kids love to build and create and I love educational toys so we were all super excited to use Brain Blox Wooden Building Planks from Brain Blox to build a variety of items!

 Our Brain Blox Wooden Building Planks

The back of the packaging has some fun building ideas!

These wooden building planks are 100% natural and chemical free.  They are made from New Zealand Pine and are made sustainably with renewable resources.  They are solid and precision cut.  They can be used by toddlers and beyond (4-104).  Our set came with 200 planks and a drawstring backpack to hold them as well as a booklet of build ideas.

Here you can see that our red drawstring backpack is nice and large.

 Inside our box!

 Every plank is the same size and above you can see the plank thickness.

 The planks fit nicely in the bag.

Here you see E carrying our planks around in the drawstring bag.

I love that these building planks help build confidence and creativity in my kiddos.  They also help them develop problem solving and reasoning abilities as they build and create.  I really enjoy watching their ideas come to life in wooden form.

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Flower

Here we have a garden with a sun.

 Mr. Robot

 G with Mr. Robot

 A tower

 B making a domino chain.

G making his own chain...

A large domino chain...

Check out our domino chain of wooden planks in action below!

 A constructing a train with planks.

A's finished train with passengers added.

E used the building booklet to build a dock.

 Building a globe tower, top view

 Our completed globe tower

 Pirate Ship, ahoy matey!

 This spiral tower is so fun.

Here is a top view of it.

Not only is there a booklet of build ideas but there are also suggestions for other cool ideas as well.

There are so many ways to use these versatile blocks - STEM projects, school, family time, competitions, and even on the go to name a few.  Brain Blox Wooden Building Planks are available for purchase in sets of 100, 200 or 300.  If you need a fun and unique gift idea, this is definitely a contender.  You can purchase Brain Blox Wooden Building Planks here.

Another fun thing you can do with Brain Blox planks are brain puzzles!  The puzzles can be found online here.  Your job is to try and figure out the solutions.  There are hints available as well as the solutions online too.  You can even come up with your very own puzzles.

Here is an example of one of the brain puzzles, puzzle 12.  What's the highest number you can make above by moving only 2 planks?  Good luck.

If you are looking for some fun build idea with instructional videos go here.  You can also download a free Brain Blox eBook which includes ideas for building towers, trees, boats, planes, animals, buildings and so much more!

Here's an example page from the eBook that shows you different ways to build towers.

Please check out my review on Fun Family Chess, another fun product by Brain Blox.

As always, be sure to click on the banner below to visit the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read more reviews of Brain Blox Wooden Building Planks by Brain Blox.

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Brain Blox Fun Family Chess Review

If you know my family, then you know that C is obsessed with chess.  I love how easy Brain Blox makes it for everyone (even younger children) to learn how to play chess with their Fun Family Chess.

First, I want to say that this set is absolutely beautiful.  The board and pieces are so well made.  This set comes with a wooden chess board, 32 solid wood chess pieces (16 dark brown and 16 white), 2 velvet bags to sort and protect your pieces, a wooden chess cube, 2 reference cards, and a full color instructions booklet.  You can play Fun Family Chess as well as regular chess.

Our Fun Family Chess set.  You can see that the board folds in half for easy storage and the inside has a soft velvet lining.

Here you can see the pieces set up on the board.  There is a picture grid on the board to help kids learn the correct placing of the pieces.

Fun Family Chess

So, what exactly is Fun Family Chess?  It was created to make chess more fun and easy to learn for both kids and adults.  Think of it as a more kid-friendly version of the game of chess.  Fun Family Chess is a 2 player game but you can also have 2 teams (so multiple people can partner together against others).  One thing that makes this game fairly different from regular chess is the chess cube.  It is a 6-sided dice with colored pictures of a rook, bishop, queen, knight, pawn and star on each side.  There are 2 game reference cards for each player or team.  The cards show you the six different chess pieces and how they can move along the chess board.

 You can see the chess cube above.

A color coded reference card makes it even easier for younger players to match up their roll with the piece they need to move.

The rules are fairly simple.  The white or light team rolls first.  You roll the cube and move the piece that you roll.  If you can move you must.  If you cannot move the piece that you roll or you no longer have that piece, you roll again until you get a piece you can move.  If you roll a star, you choose which piece you want to move.  There is no picture of a king on the chess cube so the only way to move it is to roll a star.  As you play this game you capture your opponent's pieces by landing on the square of the piece, like in normal chess.  The goal of this game is to capture your opponent's king, that's it!  Once you do that, you win or vice versa.

 C and F playing

 F moving one of his pawns.

F thinking about his next move.

The Family Fun Chess method of learning chess allows you to learn the complexities of chess in stages and have fun as you learn.  Now C already knows way more about regular chess than I do but I appreciate this gradual approach to the game for my younger crew.  I think it really helps them learn about the pieces and how they move around the board so they have a better framework for how to view regular chess.  This is a super fun addition to have for game nights, parties and would make a great gift as well!  You can purchase Fun Family Chess here.

C playing a game with E.

 B playing with E.

 B won this round.

After you master Fun Family Chess for awhile, you can learn the few extra rules that are used in regular chess.  Here they are - First, there is no chess cube used.  Second, winning is a bit different.  Instead of capturing your opponent's king, you essentially trap it so that they cannot move by putting it into checkmate.   Third is pawn promotion.  In regular chess, if you can get one of your pawns safely across the board to the other side it is instantly promoted to any piece you choose (except a king).  Fourth, there is also the rule of en passant.  If your opponent moves one of their pawn two spaces on their first move which lands side-by-side to one of your pawns, you can capture your opponents pawn by moving diagonally behind it.  And the fifth and final rule is castling, which lets you move your rook and king in the same turn.  You can only castle when both the king and the rook haven't moved yet during the game, the spaces between the king and the rook are empty, the king is not currently in check, and the king would not pass through any squares that would place it in check while castling.  It might sound complicated but I'm certain that if you start with the basics and begin with Fun Family Chess, it won't be long until your are mastering all the rules of the game.

Below is a little video that shows you a bit about Fun Family Chess.



And this next video shows you how to play Fun Family Chess and walks you through some sample plays as well.



Please check out my review on Wooden Building Planks, another fun product by Brain Blox.

As always, be sure to click on the banner below to visit the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read more reviews of Fun Family Chess by Brain Blox.

You can engage with Brain Blox on social media @:

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