Count Your Chickens! (game review)

One thing we noticed when we first started playing board games with the kids was just how competitive Bobble was. That doesn’t really come as a surprise to me since I’m a very competitive person, but the display he put on when he lost a game was absurd. When he won, he’d boast and brag. I get it, he’s proud he won. Still, getting him to understand sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t was hard. The games from Peaceable Kingdom help eliminate that sort of issue.

Count YourChickens! is a cooperative game where everyone works together to win. You either all win, or you all lose. Nobody is better than anyone else in the end, so you all feel good, or you all are determined to try again to succeed as a team.

Although it might be a minor thing, I love how the instructions are on the inside of the game box. The lid contains the instructions so you can't lose them, and there isn't excess waste from adding more paper to the game packaging. Save trees, and don't lose your instructions at the same time!

Count Your Chickens! has 40 little chick chips or tokens, a mother hen game piece, a spinner, and the board. To set up, you put the mother hen at START, and you scatter the chicks all across the board (anywhere except in the coop). The goal is to get all the chicks into the coop before the mother hen gets to the coop.

Actual game play sees everyone playing as the mother hen. The players take turns spinning, and each spin determines the number of chicks placed in the coop. If you spin the cow, for example, you count the number of spaces you move to get to the next cow space. If you moved 4 spaces, you put 4 chicks in the coop. If the space you move to shows a chick atop the animal (in this instance, a chick atop a cow), you get to add one extra chick to the coop. If you land on the fox, you take a chick out of the coop and place it back on the board. If you get all the chicks in the coop before you reach the end, you win! If you don’t, better luck next time.

Bobble got a dog for the first spin, so he added 6 chicks to the coop because the first dog square was 6 spaces from the start.

The great thing about this game is that there is no singled out player, and you can use the set up to teach lessons about nature. I like that you can add story to it if you want to give a reason why the chicks should be in the coop. Maybe your kids are learning about predators, so you could pretend there was a hawk spotted. Maybe it is feeding time and the chicks need to get back, or it’s getting near dark and they need to roost. If you don’t want to, then you just have a fun game that helps children learn to count. No reading is required for this game (provided someone can explain the instructions the first time to the children).

Count Your Chickens! is for children ages 3+, for up to 4 players, and takes around 15 minutes to play start to finish. You can find Count Your Chickens! at select retail stores (Target carries Peaceable Kingdoms games) or online at Amazon.com for approximately $16.

Disclaimer: Thoughts of Fluff is responsible for the content of this post. Count Your Chickens! was purchased by me and all opinions are my own and may differ from those of your own.