Toy Review by Audrina & Vincent - Greedy Gorilla

Feed the junk food to the Greedy Gorilla, while you make a healthy meal!

This bestselling game encourages healthier eating for kids in a fun way. Use the healthy food cards to create a nutritious meal in this simple game. However, if you pick up an item of junk food – like ice cream, pizza or a burger – you must post this into the gorilla’s mouth to make him burp! The winner of the Greedy Gorilla game is the first person to fill all their meal tiles.

To support kids to recognise the difference between healthier and junk foods, cards are colour coded – blue for healthier foods and yellow for junk foods. The game also includes a real burping noise whenever a card is posted into the gorilla’s mouth, which Novita kids Audrina and Vincent found hilarious! Players must say ‘excuse me’ after the gorilla has burped, which encourages polite manners. We have included both standard and simplified instructions for this game below.

What’s In The Greedy Gorilla Game Box?

4 playing boards
24 healthy food cards
8 junk food cards
1 gorilla posting box (batteries included)

Therapeutic Benefits of Greedy Gorilla Game

Greedy Gorilla is a great game that children find very motivating. The game assists children to understand that when they do something, like put a card in the gorilla’s mouth, something happens, like the gorilla burping. This ‘I do something and something happens’ idea is very important so that children can understand the connection between an action and a consequence. It also assists them to understand that they can influence what’s around them. This helps develop communication, play and intentional actions.

Through the Greedy Gorilla game, children can also develop their turn-taking, communication and fine-motor skills.

Turn-Taking: For a child still learning to take turns, this is a great game, as you can adapt the game to make turns as quick or long as you prefer.

Communication: This game is used a lot with children who use Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). This game can assist children to understand that their device will be their communication tool. They can use their device to request that they want to put more food in the gorilla’s mouth or they can describe the type of food they give to the gorilla. You can encourage the child to use their device to communicate this. Also, this game has the benefit of increasing their language and variety of words. For more information on how this game assists with communication please speak to a Speech Pathologist.

Fine motor skills: This game is beneficial for developing children’s posting skills – where the child grips an object then posts it into a slot. The cards and slot are both quite small, so need a finer grip and movement. This also develops the child’s hand-eye coordination if they find this difficult. The gorilla is a great motivation to be able to build on children’s tolerance and patience because they are sometimes not able to do something on their first go.

All round, this a great game for developing a child’s communication, intentional actions, fine motor skills, tolerance and patience.

How To Play Greedy Gorilla Game

(Standard Version)

The objective of the Greedy Gorilla game is to be the first player to fill your playing board with food cards that make up a healthy meal.

Let’s play

To begin, each player chooses a playing board.
The healthy food and junk food cards are shuffled and spread out face downwards on the table.
The youngest player begins by picking up a card.
If the food on the card matches a food picture on their playing board, the player places the card on the square on their board.
If a player picks up a healthy food card that is not on their playing board, they cannot use it and must put it back faced downwards on the table.
If the player picks up a junk food card, which is illustrated with a yellow background, they must post it into the greedy gorilla’s mouth to make him burp. When the greedy gorilla burps, all players should put a hand to their mouth and say, ‘Excuse me!’
Play then passes to the person on the player’s left.
Play continues until one player has filled their playing board.
The winner is the first player to match all the healthy food cards to their playing board.

How to Play Greedy Gorilla Game

(Simplified Version)

The player puts the cards into the greedy gorilla’s mouth or someone else can put the cards into the gorilla’s mouth at the player’s request.
Someone can prompt the player to talk about what food they have chosen and describe it using their words or device.
Someone can hold the card next to the gorilla’s mouth until the player asks for more, using their words or device.
Take turns with the other player to put cards in the gorilla’s mouth to practise turn-taking.

Make Your Own Greedy Gorilla Game

What you’ll need

1 empty 2/3L milk bottle
A pair of scissors
Materials to represent food (like pieces of cardboard, cotton wool, string and bottle caps)
Materials to make milk bottle into an animal, for example, paper, patty pans, permanent markers and bottle caps
Masking tape or sticky tape

Method

Wash out milk bottle.
Decorate the milk bottle using whatever materials you like to make it into an animal of your choice (see above inspiration), leaving a space for the mouth hole.
Cut out mouth hole in the milk bottle.
Use masking tape (or sticky tape) and put in around the edge of the mouth hole so it’s not sharp.
Choose some objects with different textures to represent food, to motivate the child, for example, bits of cardboard, bottle caps, cotton wool, string or wool, pom poms or fabric.
Make your best burp noise when you feed the ‘food’ to the milk bottle animal.

Helpful Information