Hide & Goat Seek || Preschool SmartGame Review

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Games are powerful learning tools, even for preschoolers! Here’s what we thought of Hide & Goat Seek by SmartGames.

A special thank you to Timberdoodle company for sponsoring this post and providing us with a complimentary copy of Hide & Goat Seek in exchange for our honest review. 

Hide and Goat Seek is an adorable SmartGame that is included in the Timberdoodle Preschool Curriculum Kit for 2025. It’s designed for ages 3-7, so essentially preschool to 2nd grade range. 

What’s In the Box

The game comes with the game board, all the little figures–-goats and a wolf, furniture pieces for the goats to hide inside, the challenge booklet, and a picture book. 

My son just turned 3 and he’s handled his older sister’s SmartGames and played with pieces and the game boards, but we had never actually sat down to try any challenges before. 

What I love about this game is that it really begins at the beginning. The challenge booklet explains the rules on the first page and they have some tips for those of us who are starting with young children who have never played a logic or deduction game before. So super helpful. 

You play by selecting your challenge and setting up the pieces as shown in the booklet. Then the player helps the goats to pick their hiding spots to solve the puzzle. But, the twist is that the goats are shaped differently, and not all the hiding spots fit every goat’s shape. There’s only 1 solution for each puzzle and it’s shown on the back side of each challenge page. There are 48 challenges that increase in difficulty from starter to master.

This game helps to build young children’s concentration, logic and deduction, shape and color recognition, problem solving and spatial reasoning skills.

The game comes with a wordless picture book and Timberdoodle gives a warning that sensitive kiddos probably should have this book hidden from them. The game is based on the a Brothers Grimm fairy tale from the 1800s so while not gory per say, the story is a little dark and could disturb little ones.

Playing for the First Time 

When I pulled this game out with my 3 year old, the first time we opened it, I didn’t even look at the challenges. I just let him explore the pieces and the board. We talked about the colors of the goats. We discovered that they were different shapes and that certain pieces matched or didn’t match those shapes. After a few minutes of play and conversation, he said “all done” and we put it away until the next day. 

The next day I brought it out again, and my 9 year old wanted to see what it was all about too, so the three of us sat down and opened the challenge book. I read them the rules, and we tried a few. And as all parents of two or more children will know, there was some fighting, but we preserved and we were able to do some of the starter puzzles, and even try one master puzzle, and it really was a lot of fun.

You can see some of our demo footage in my review video:

My 3 year old didn’t always understand what was being asked of him in the challenges, but with some prompting questions like “does this piece fit here?” or “which piece fits on the triangle goat?” he was able to trial and error discover the answers.

The more we played, the more he picked it up. And of course the master level was too hard for him to figure out on his own, but if you advance from starter challenge #1, doing 1-2 challenges a week, most kids will pick it up. It’s also totally okay to help them see the answer and talk about how you got there, and then have them repeat that challenge the next week and see if they can do it themselves. 

Hide & Goat Seek is a hit with my preschooler, 9 year old and myself! It’s a very fun, hands on way to learn. You can see the whole Preschool Curriculum here, or Hide & Goat Seek individually here.

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