What’s all the Hullabaloo?

Hullabaloo means “great noise or excitement; uproar”, and finds it’s origins in Northern England and Scotland. Here’s what one etymologist says:  “No one knows exactly where “hullabaloo” came from, but there’s a good chance that it all started with the exclamation “hullo” (used to get someone’s attention and the ancestor of our modern “hello”), which was often repeated to indicate surprise or excitement. The classic British policeman’s exclamation of “Allo, allo, what’s going on ‘ere?” is an example of this repetitive use.” Eventually the second repetition got morphed a bit, and became “bullo”.

Word origins aside, Hullabaloo means only one thing in our house – a great game we can all play together. (like “Feed the Kitty” from yesterday’s post.) It’s one of the only games I’ve allowed in our house that requires batteries.

Hullabaloo is from another innovative game company called Cranium. In their own words “We craft Cranium products to celebrate the full range of everyone’s natural abilities. Kids and adults of all ages shine as they create works of art and imagination, perform hilarious feats, discover fascinating new things, and connect with friends and family. With Cranium, Everyone Shines!”

Enough quoting other people. I bought this game when Rob was 3ish. He had some sort of Sensory Processing Disorder (All fixed now. Yeah!), and had difficulty hearing directions AND then doing them, especially multi-step ones. Hullabaloo consists of different sets of colored Cranium pads, catagorizable by shapes, color, or object, and a round speaker thing that gives both instructions and encouragement.

This is my favorite game for playing with kids across all age levels. Rob loved this, and got him excited about listening for content. His movement vocabulary increased with instructions like crawl, twirl, high-five, zoom and slither. He became adept at following directions like – put your nose on a red, AND your knee on a food.

Although it says 3 and up, this game is totally do-able for younger kids. We’d help Natalie when she was little  by saying – “Go to a red”, or when it told her to sit down on a musical instrument, we’d say, “Sit on the piano.” And, IT’S OKAY for more than one person to share the SAME Cranium pad. So reminds the voice every time.

The games are short, which provides lots of opportunities to “shine”. (Which means “win” in Cranium language.) At our house, everyone usually does the “funky monkey dance” or “takes a bow” with the winner, anyway.

So, highly recommended for a game all members of the family can play together, sheer amount of silliness and fun, and sneakily developmentally beneficial at the same time!

What are your family’s favorite games? You can email reviews to analiisa@studio3music.com. We’d love to post them!

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who once had a delightful email conversation about Hullabaloo with the former Grand Poobah (literally what the CEO called himself) of Cranium when he was grounded in a Chicago airport in the middle of winter. He sent Studio3Music two Hullabaloos when he got home, so we could play them before class. What a nice man! Funny, too.