Thank you Super Duper Publications
for providing me with  a product to review, free of charge,
and for sponsoring this giveaway.
These are my own honest opinions.

Learning and having fun shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. In fact, we know that kids learn more easily and retain information better when they are having fun. Yet, so often learning feels like work and having fun just means being silly without a purpose. Whenever I find a game or an activity that combines both, I know I’ve got the best of the best!

 Super Duper Publications offers some of the best known and most popular materials used by clinicians such as speech-language pathologists (like myself) and occupational therapists as well as teachers. Why do we love them so much? Because they are well designed, pictures are beautiful, but also – more importantly – because of the FUN factor! A child who doesn’t even realize he’s learning because he’s having so much fun will want to play that game again and again and learn more every time.

No wonder Super Duper Publications games and activity books are also becoming hugely popular with parents! I, for one, love their language building games and activities but they also have tons of materials on articulation, autism, basic concepts, critical thinking, ESL, math, reading and much much more. My daughter and I love to play Understanding Games and doing crafts with our Say & Glue for Language & Listening.

Understanding Sentences Fun Deck is a set of 60 cards divided in 2 types. The first contains 20 cards that have 1 image with 3 sentences. 1 of the sentences accurately describes the image while the other 2 are slightly different yet related. For example, there could be an image of dog fetching a stick and the 3 sentences would be ‘The dog is fetching a stick’, The dog buries the stick’ or ‘The cat fetches a stick’.

The second set contains 40 cards and is the opposite of the first: each card has 1 sentence and 3 images. 1 of the images accurately depicts the sentence while the other 2 are slightly different. For example, the sentence could be ‘They found a bat in the cave‘ and the images could be of 2 children finding a bat in a cave, 2 children finding a bear in a cave, and 2 children finding a bat up in a tree.

As you can see, for both sets, the child has to really pay attention when he listens or reads each sentence to find the right answer. Even though it is designed for children grade K to 6, my 2.5 year old is able to understand many of the simpler sentences (she is quite advanced language-wise). I find the 1 sentence/3 image cards easier for her because there isn’t as much verbal information to remember. What’s great is that she is already learning new words and learning to pay attention to all the words in a sentence because she realizes that’s the key to get the right answer.

So that’s the educational part of it but really, how much fun it finding an image that matches a sentence or vice-versa? The trick to make this a fun educational game is the secret decoder! This key-chain like gadget reveals the right answer when its light is shone on it. If you point its on the wrong answer, nothing happens but when you point it on the right away, it lights up in red! My daughter can’t get enough of this. She feels like a magician when she finds the correct answer! It’s quite amazing how a demanding task can turn into tons of fun.

The second activity we like to do comes from one of the Say & Glue Fun Sheets series: Say & Glue Language & Listening. This book contains 94 two-part activities on different topics such as categories, functions, concepts, following complex or conditional directions, etc. Each activity has a full-page scene and an instruction page which has small pictures to cut and paste, 4-12 directions to follow as well as language expansion activities. The only thing missing, in my opinion, would be a printable CD to accompany the book so I wouldn’t have to copy from the book itself.

Because it’s so hands-on, the activity itself is fun and doesn’t need much more to be motivating but I like to celebrate at the end by coloring the images with my daughter. She always looks forward to that part and it gives us even more opportunities to review and practice words or concepts that were more difficult.

Buy It: Head over to Super Duper Publications to see for yourself the amazing selection of educational materials and apps they offer.  

Connect: Don’t forget to like Super Duper Publications on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, Pinterest, and subscribe to their YouTube channel for all the latest news and promotions.

Win It: Super Duper Publications is generously offering one of our lucky readers their choice of Say & Glue Fun Sheets, Sentence Fill-In Decks or the Understanding Sentences Fun Deck. The giveaway is open to US and Canada and will end May 21st. For your chance to win, enter the Giveaway Tools below. Good luck!

Rachel