Instructions for the I Spy Preschool Board Game

“I Spy Memory Game” is a board game aimed at children between the ages of 4 and 8, but is designed so that older children can play and enjoy, as well. The game is based on the children’s books published by Scholastic and helps preschool-aged children develop important visual, memory and reading skills.

This game may have one to four players and contains 12 interlocking matches. The Teacher’s Guide provided by Scholastic, creator of the game, says “I Spy Preschool Game is the self-correcting matching game where players match riddles with pictures. When all the pairs are completed everyone wins... I Spy Preschool Game helps players to practice the important pre-reading skills of visual discrimination, matching, rhyming and "reading" pictures. It also helps teaches cooperation and how to follow rules.”

Beginning players use the pictures on the card to find its match, identical to the game of memory. The tricky part to the I Spy game is the images on the matching cards are not exactly alike. The pictures may have slight differences, or seen at different angles. According to the instructions provided by Scholastic, recognizing objects at a alternate perspective or in a different environment is a valuable to the development of a child’s reading skills.

While younger players use the pictures to read the clues, older children playing “I Spy” can actually read the words and attempt to solve the riddles. This is done by players searching for the four objects described in the riddle to solve the puzzle.