MindWare Gifts -- Perfect Gifts to Get Them Thinking!!

Disclosure: I was sent these items to review free of charge from MindWare. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

I have been sharing some of our favorite places to get gifts and tonight I am sharing a new one. MindWare has many educational and fun gifts. They are connected now with Oriental Trading. You can get your party supplies and gifts in one stop!! The first thing I knew I wanted to check out was Qwirkle. I had heard of it but never played. 

Since I wanted to check it out, we played it right after getting it. We so far have played without scoring just so we could get the hang of what we could play and couldn't. Hazel LOVES this game. She wants to bring it everywhere now.

Inside the box are the wooden tiles, a cloth bag and instructions. This game is a combination of Rummikub and Scrabble and a bit like Dominoes. The wooden tiles have one of six shapes in one of the six colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet). A play can be made by matching shapes or colors without any duplicates (so no two red squares in the same row). The scoring is done by the tiles in the row(s) played with extra points for a qwirkle (all six possible matching tiles in a row). 

It is to be played with two to four players. Keeping score will include addition skills which is something we need to work on anyway. Needless to say we are loving this game!! It is easy to bring with you since all the pieces fit into the cloth bag too!!

The rest of the items are gifts for Hazel for either Christmas or her birthday. However I know she is going to love these. She looked at the MindWare site with me under the guise of adding items to her wish list. The first gift is three different activity books. She said if she got these under her tree it would make her day. They are now wrapped and under her tree in her room. She can open them on Christmas morning so we can sleep in!!

The first is an Extreme Dot to Dot: Endangered Animals. Hazel's class does these all the time as a challenge. She wants to be able to do them on her own time as well since she enjoys the ones at school so much. Can you tell what these animals are in the pictures? I can't.

 Hidden Endangered Animals is a fun coloring book with information about the various animals. Between Hazel's love of animals and love of coloring I think she will really love this book.

Color Counts: Animals is a color by number. This is another of Hazel's favorite school activities so she wants more to do at home.

I am going to make sure there are some colored pencils and such in her room Christmas morning. I know she is going to have a lot of fun with all three of these books.

Hazel loves stones, shells, minerals and fossils. She has quite a collection of them and often wants books on them, so she can learn more. She wanted Dig It Up!: Minerals and Fossils so she can add twelve new minerals and fossils to her collection. Each stone comes with its own chisel and instructions so this could be done in a group or class. 

The box also has a field guide with information of the possible treasures in the stones.

Our final gift is Make Your Own Glitter Snow Globes. This kit provides the materials to make two glitter snow globes.

This kit comes with twelve clay colors. The artist begins by creating the clay objects to be in the snow globe. The clay will need to be baked in the oven. 

I know she is going to love making these and playing with them afterwards. These two kits are going to be part of her birthday gifts. I know she is going to love them!! Now I can honestly recommend you check out MindWare and the amazing gift ideas they have. They have toys for kids and adults and sell other brands as well. So if you have a few more gifts to get, check them out!!