Baku who?

What have my kids been all excited about for the past two days, you ask?

Bakugan!

Baku- who?

Assuming some of you out there are as clueless as I was, I will clue you in.





Zoo Boy received a DVD with a few Bakugan cartoons on it for his birthday from a friend. I had never heard of it, neither had the kids, but just the cover art got them excited. Turns out that Bakugan is another card game type thing, along the lines of Pokemon. Only with a much more attractive twist. And when the kids discovered Bakugan Battle Packs at BJs Wholesale yesterday, both of my stingy children, who think that all money belongs in banks, opened their wallets wide and made one of the few purchases they've made in their lives.

And they've been playing Bakugan battles ever since.

Here's how it works:

You select a few of these Bakugan balls.

You open your field by each player putting down a Gate Card.

Then you roll a Bakugan ball at the field, yelling (as loud as possible, apparently) "Bakugan, brawl!"

So here's the cool part: when the ball gets to the metallic Gate Card, it springs open, revealing the Bakugan creature within. Like Pokemon, there are various types and each has a certain power level.

Oh yeah, almost forgot, when your Bakugan hits the field you yell (again, loud is obviously important!) "Bakugan stand!"

Following me so far?

Ok, so then each opponent looks inside their Bakugan to see what their starting "G" power is. The higher the power the better. The player can boost the power of their Bakugan in a couple of ways.

They can "open" their Gate Card (by flipping it over and yelling "Gate Card open!) to change the field. In this case, the Gate Card opens a Fire Pit, which gives added advantages to some Bakugan (and I assume also is a negative for others, but I'm honestly not that well versed in the game -- yet). My favorite Gate Card is the Quick Sand, which allows the Bakugan with the lesser amount of G Power to win.

They can also use an Ability Card on their Bakugan to use a specific attack and boost their power. This is "Hot Wind", and I would need to read the small print in order to figure out exactly what that meant. But I'm not going to. Because I'm not a young male to whom these things appeal. (And appeal in a MAJOR way, apparently, if my kids' enthusiasm for this stuff is any indication.)

This game has inspired a ton of imagination and some pretty complicated math skills (my kids are suddenly adding numbers with 3 places -- whoa).

So I declare it a good thing. Although I've had to make room in my schedule for the kids to obsess over them for a few days. I know my kids, without that room, it would just be misery for us all.

Besides, I've already started using it in our curriculum work -- our movement activities today were a Bakugan Brawl (the kids were Bakugan who had to roll, jump, drag themselves along the ground, pounce, wrestle, and 'fly'). It was a pretty good physical and sensory work-out!

And, OK, I admit it, I really liked yelling "Bakugan, brawl!" at my kids.