Teacher Created Resources Possum Dice Game

I am a huge fan of Yahtzee for educational purposes. I have played multiple math-style versions such as the original and place-value Yahtzee. When I saw this game as a word-yahtzee style, my excitement grew. This is a great one-on-one game to play or with a group. As a class, I started off having students make word with the dice just to make words. Once they were comfortable with that part, then I had them identify some of the parts of speech as they made the words. Then, we played the game. It is fun way to practice spelling, word-smithing, and grammar!! I love games that make learning fun (or trick my kids into thinking they aren't learning!)

I agree with the other reviewers about the dice needing to have more options. I played with my three kids age 8,10,12. It was not too difficult for them. In fact, they were beating me. (My 8 yr old does love to read and is a good speller though). However, we quickly learned that while we were trying to go for a specific letter to complete our word, we needed to know which letters were on the remaining dice to decide what we could roll for. This took even more time to figure out what word you could make. We decided to play the “short version”, and even with that the game took incredibly long, atleast an hour. My kids were getting bored between their turns, and so was I. I was also surprised how many times I needed to look up words to see if they could be used as a noun, verb, adj….out of context, I wasn’t always so sure since the words were sometimes unique. This added even further to how long this game took. I decided to return it. Great concept though, and there was definitely learning involved, which was why we bought it. It just took too long for our purposes.

Kids love this one, and it helps them differentiate between verbs, nouns, and adjectives. They love making up their own words and definitions as a bonus roll. Good time.

The best way to describe this game is if you took the games "Boggle," "Yahtzee," & "Scrabble" and mashed them together, then added a hint of "Madlibs"... you have POSSUM.I played this game w/my 17 year old daughter. It was fine, but we both agree that this game would be too advanced for 8 y/o's. The box has an age of 8+, but that really seems too young for this game. My daughter, who is actually in advanced placement classes, said that it should be for ages 12 and up. I agree.The game itself is pretty straightforward. There are 2 pads (50 each) of score cards and six 6-sided letter dice. This game suggests 2 - 6 players, but I wouldn't want to play this game with anymore than 3 people, 2 people took long enough.The score card has different categories to fill in on your turn. You have to make a 3, 4, or 5 letter Noun, Verb, or Adjective, there is a 5 or 6 letter ANY word spot, and then there are 2 POSSUM word spots. A POSSUM word is a made up word. This basically comes in handy if you can't come up w/a real word for 1 of the other categories. Whichever word/category you choose you have to use the word in a sentence properly for the word to count. This is even true for the POSSUM words. Then you total up the points in the row. Make sure to count the extra points for any RED letters that may have been used. Once all the rows are filled in you can add all the various categories together to obtain your final score. It takes 12 turns to complete the score card. If you can not make a word to fit one of the categories, then you must take a zero in 1 of the rows.Overall this made for an interesting game. You'll definitely want to have a dictionary handy. I just used Google. My daughter and I liked it, but as I stated before it definitely is not a short game. The other issue we had is the limited letters.On your turn you roll all 6 dice. You may then reroll any or all of them up to 2 more times. The problem is that there are only 6 letters per die, so this really limits what letter you will get. Say I tried to make a word, but needed another vowel to complete it. I could try to reroll, but it's only going to work if the die I'm re-rolling actually has the letter that I need. This is where it would've been nice if the dice were more like the die from "Scattegories." That die is multi-sided and has many letters, these type of dice could've made this game more fun and not as challenging for little kids. The age range could potentially be 8+ if this game had better letter dice.The dice and the exaggerated age range is what made this potentially 4 - 5 STAR game a 3-STAR game instead.

My sister is obsessed with Yahtzee. I always hated that game. I'm obsessed with Scrabble. She won't play it with me. I got this new game (possum: my favorite animal! How auspicious, right?) in anticipation her once-a-year visit. We both disliked it.For kids who have not yet become attached to Scrabble or Yahtzee, this might be fun.The categories are educational - noun, verb, adjective - but the "homework" aspect of writing down the word in "Pick a Category," is it a 3-, 4-, or 5-letter word, is tedious. The luck of the draw, for letters, is limited by the dice. You have no hope of drawing a needed vowel or consonant if the letter you're keeping has the letter you want on one of its unexposed sides.The scorekeeping and vocabulary building is so cumbersome, I quickly reverted to Scrabble, and my sister pulled out her Yahtzee game from her suitcase, and we played a round of each old, familiar board game, and will try to find some child to pass the Possum game to.