Pickles to Penguins game

My husband and I have some friends that we've known since college, and we get together with about once a month.  Usually, they come visit for a weekend, and we pretty much spend the weekend playing board games.  Yep, a full weekend of board games, party games, and card games.  I'm talking about Risk, Scattegories, and less well known games like Dominion, Pandemic, and Ticket to Ride.

You can imagine that holidays are a chance to give and get new games for our group.  Most games aren't appropriate for therapy, or would take WAY too long to setup/play during a school therapy session.

So, imagine how excited I was when a game that we bought for my friends turned out to be a perfect game for SLPs.

I present to you:

Pickles to Penguins picture from Amazon.com

The game is terribly simple.  The deck is a series of double sided labeled photographs (are we not excited, SLPs?).  Each player gets a certain number of cards, and place 5 out, either side up.  Two cards get placed in the middle of the table, and players attempt to unload the cards from their smaller decks onto the middle decks by using COMPLETE SENTENCES to explain how the card from the middle and the card they are playing are related.

So, I might say the Airplane and the Stove (from my hand) are both made of metal. And someone else might say that they cook with the frying pan on the stove for the next card/point.

Here's a video to help make my point:

It's a pretty fast-paced game, and probably took us less than 3 minutes for 3 players. But of course, I would imagine it to take a bit longer with students. 

I really like that the cards are photographs and labeled.  Imagine other uses:
- Category naming
-Sentence building
-Labeling
-Describing (a la Headbanz)


 Have you used Pickles to Penguins in therapy or a game that is similar? 


*For the record, I am getting nothing for this post.  I just happened to think it was a neato game that will now be on my wish list.