We love nothing more than a good games night in this house and often try out new board games on the weekends but since lockdown I have been trying to incorporate a few more educational based games to help instil a bit of learning along side the fun for the kids. This week we tried out Through Others’ Eyes by Brainstorm Toys and below you can read our full review.
What is Through Others’ Eyes?
Through Others’ Eyes is an educational game aimed at children over the age of 6. The main concept s to try on lots of different glasses and look through different lenses to see the world through they eyes of different types of animals.
Our review of through others’ eye
I found that although the game is aimed at those aged 6 and over it could easily be enjoyed by those younger too. It is a very simplistic game, so much so that when I first opened it I was a little underwhelmed and thought it would be a very quick 10 minute activity that my 7 would enjoy and that my 10 year old would roll his eyes at. In actual fact we spent just over an hour playing Through Others’ Eyes and both boys enjoyed it equally.
The concept, like I said, is simple but effective. The box contains a pair of plastic glasses and a selection of different lenses that can be added to the glasses, using up to 3 at a time. There is also a booklet that comes with it that tells you which lenses to put in the frames to imitate the vision of certain animals.
You could use this set in a few ways but the way we did it was with me building the glasses using the booklet and boys having to walk around in them and then guess which animal can actually see like that, then we discussed it and at the end the boys had to write up 5 new things they had learnt from the activity.
Once we had exhausted the list provided in the booklet the boys started to take it in turns to create the “craziest” visions they could and proceeded to walk round the front room bumping into things and laughing at each other.
Despite my initial reservations through others’ eyes is great for teaching science. We discussed how eye sight works, what it would be like to be colour blind and partially sighted and had lots of discussions about animals – how they see and if we think their behaviour can be explained by this new knowledge. For example by son told me about how if you happen to get caught by a shark you should punch it on the nose (don’t ask) having now seen how a shark has no vision directly in front of them this fun fact now makes perfect sense and he will definitely use this info should he need it!
Through Others’ Eyes by Brainstorm Toys is easy to use and can help teach primary school science. It can be picked up and used for quick 10 minute fillers throughout the day or played with for a lot longer like we did. I also think you could easily link this to more full on research sessions and lesson plans if you wanted to and it is a great resource to have in your home schooling kit.
Another great educational game is The Beating Heart by John Adams that we reviews during lockdown.
(We were gifted Through others’ eyes by Brainstorm Toys in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own).