Cooperative Gardening Board Games for your kids!

The story behind Edible Plant Parts Game:

When our daughters were little, we wanted them to learn to use as many parts of plants we grew or bought as possible. But it was always a challenge because not every part of the potato plant is edible! and some parts of plants are poisonous!

But my kids always learned better when made a game out of it.

So when I was creating the Oasis Box of November 2020 about the edible parts of plants, I thought why not make a cooperative board game about it, and that's how this game was born!

Creating this game was a lot of fun for me. My little one really enjoyed helping me out, and when Oasis Box members got it, the feedback was lovely!

The Board:

So what do you do with different parts of plants when you can't eat them raw?

Sometimes you cook or make tea, sometimes you compost it and sometimes you save it in a special drawer for later!

This board has a spot for everything!

But grandma is waiting for us to bring her ingredients for dinner and we only have 10 hours to get a number of things she needs to make dinner on time. Her dinner has a stew, a salad and teas!

And there are 10 hour spots on the board and when they all fill out, we've ran out of time!

The Plant Part Puzzle Cards:

There are 4 pieces that together make up each plant, and there are 10 plants, totaling to 40 cards.

As we play the game we have to make these plant puzzles, and when a plant is completed, we can use its parts in the kitchen, in the compost or in grandma's seed saving cabinet.

We have to decide what's edible and what's not and what can go in grandma's stew, salad or tea. How? The cards are color coded with circle dots!

And we only have 10 hours to gather enough ingredients for all grandma needs.

These cards have realistic pictures to enhance the learning! Did you know that's how a lettuce looks like when it bolds into flowers and seeds?!

The Hour Cards:

To track time, we have 10 hour cards.

Every time we draw one, we have to place it on the board, which, unfortunately, means we have one hour less to finish the job.

Top of Page

The story behind Garden Heroes Game:

 When I started teaching gardening in schools, I noticed a huge gap in the way kids feel about beneficial insects, especially bees, and how they "should" feel!

Every time a bee came around the garden there was at least one kid who was overcome with stress and anxiety, which quickly spread to all, and in a matter of seconds everyone was running around screaming in panic!

I always thought to myself... what a mess!... What a pity... that these kids not only don't know how to behave around these wonderful insects and animals but they do not appreciate most of them even from far.

For example, spiders would be chased, hunted and sometimes killed in the garden. And as soon as I said something like: "Oh we love spiders! They are awesome to have around a garden", everyone's jaw, even sometimes their classroom teacher, would drop!

So in August of 2020, when I was creating the Oasis Box of the month, I thought let's make a cooperative game that would raise the kids appreciation of these little garden helpers. And that's how Garden Heroes was born!

The Board:

 The game has the simplest board ever! It's simply a backyard garden the kids can relate to with flowers, lawn, a vegetable garden or two.

The game is all about inviting and keeping these garden heroes (beneficial animals and insects) to our garden and make them feel at home so they would stay.

So, there is a spot for a stack of cards that would support them, a spot for a stack of cards for the heroes themselves, and a spot we call the "Neighbors' Yards".

We don't want them to go to the neighbor's yards.

We want them to stay with us and help us grow a wonderful garden.

The Hero and Support Cards:

 There are 2 simple sets of cards in this game:

The Hero cards and the Support cards.

The heroes have powers of course or they wouldn't be heroes. Right!

They could be Poopers, Predators, Pollinators or Parasites. And one hero could have multiple powers too!

Each support card can support multiple Heroes and each hero can utilize multiple supports.

That's where all the fun comes from: finding out what each hero needs in order to keep them in our garden and not to escape to the neighbor's yards!

The best thing about this game is...

Not only is it not competitive, but as long as we cooperate with the heroes all the way to the end of the game, we never lose!

This game is designed in a way so that we always win, no matter what combination of cards we get in whatever order.

Luck has nothing to do with it! It's all about being smart and appreciating the garden heroes!

Top of Page

The story behind Fall Oasis Garden Game:

 What has always stunned me is that most people completely miss out on the opportunity to grow food for half of the year!

As soon as summer is over, they take all the plants out, "clean" the garden and sit on it for not only winter but also fall.

They don't realize there is sooooo much fun to have and so much food to still grow in fall!

Don't get me wrong. I do not live in a warm place. In fact I live in a very cold place. And our winters are REAL winters with tons of ice and snow and freeze. But we still can grow cool crops, plant garlic and other bulbs, harvest and preserve all before winter gets here.

And for the benefit of the beneficial little helpers of the garden, we don't even "clean up" our garden in fall. We wait all the way till spring to do that.

So when summer came to an end in 2020 and it was time for me to created the Oasis Box of September, all I could think of was how to teach this concept of fall gardening to kids. And what a better way to do that than with a board game!

The Board:

 There's so much going on in this Tri-Folded Fall Garden board, and for good reason too. There's a lot still to do in our garden before winter hits.

We have a kitchen to take the harvest from our hot-loving plant to and preserve some of it for winter.

There's a winter bar at the top to help us keep track of how close the winter is and when it's finally here.

There's a spot to keep the garlic we will be planting, a spot for our preserve labels and a spot to keep the cool crop seed packs.

And of course there's our garden in the middle.

The Cards:

We've got...

- Cool crop seeds cards to sow

- Garlic cards to plant

- Cold crops to cover and protect from freeze

- Winter cards to track our progress and know when the game ends.

- Preserve label cards to mark the preserved harvest.

- Oh and of course a color coded die that adds fun to the game and gets rolling the keeps it going.

Top of Page

Best Value!

Get all 3 cooperative board games for a whopping $22 LESS! 

For those lovely parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles... for those who know the value of all these games, who want to put an impressive big box of gift under the tree and also want to pay less of course (who wouldn't?)...

I've put together this bundle of all the 3 games together!

Top of Page

Oasis Coloring Book

20 Oasis Box Coloring Pages + 20 Collectible Stickers

Are the kids in your life into coloring?

Every Oasis Box came with a pretty and fun coloring page. I put 20 of them together in a book for you!

How about stickers?

Every Oasis Box came with a 1.5-inch round fun collectible sticker that went with the theme of that box.

I put these 20 stickers in one page and placed them at the end of this book.

For many kids, especially younger ones, coloring and learning go together very well!

Let their minds be filled with beautiful ideas about good food, lush gardens, amazing animals and insects and much much more!