Blunders® teaches children ages 5 to 10 about social and dining etiquette in the most unique, interactive, entertaining way ever imagined. Children love Blunders® because it is about the four endearing characters of Becky, Bobby, Brenda, and Billy Blunder and players laugh as they learn while trying to help the Blunders learn better manners.
Blunders® includes 300 charade, multiple choice, scenario, and true/false questions, a unique “Meet the Blunders” story booklet, a hand-illustrated game board with “seek and find” objects, four pawns of the Blunder children, table setting cards, reward tokens, and two dice for alternate types of play.
Blunders® is the perfect game for playing at home, school, or with any social club or group, it is multi-cultural, is based on universal values, and develops all styles of learning. According to a child psychiatrist, Blunders® is the ideal game to play with children with special needs.
Blunders® teaches children how to:
• Set the table correctly and use polite table manners.
• Introduce themselves and others with confidence.
• Be a polite guest and gracious host.
• Have courteous telephone manners.
• Show respect and kindness to adults, peers, and siblings.
• Not bully, tease, or gossip.
• Have nice manners at school and in all social situations.
My first entreprenerial start was my children’s etiquette workshops. These workshops were successful and parents, grandparents, and educators wanted more! Because there were no products on the market that taught manners in a fun way, I decided to create a game to teach children about manners, values, and polite behavior because I thought… how hard could it be? Well, I certainly found out that it is not so easy to create and bring to market a board game in under 9 months! What an experience this has been and I have certainly learned more than I ever expected. The toy industry is so different, but so fun too!
I launched the board game “Blunders®” at the 2008 New York Toy Fair and since then it has received national acclaim and ten prestigious toy awards including the 2009 Game of the Year Award from Creative Child Magazine, 2009 Eco-Recognition Seal from The Toy Man, and the 2008 Dr. Toy, Creative Child Preferred Choice, and iParenting Media Awards, the National Parenting Center and Mr. Dad Seals of Approval, and three Toy Man Awards including the eChoice Award, Seal of Approval, and the Award of Excellence.
While I continue to offer business and children’s etiquette workshops, I spend most of my time managing the national sales and distribution of Blunders®. The game is currently being sold in over 600 retail locations throughout the US, Canada, and Australia. I also write a blog for The Charlotte Observer on children’s etiquette, and a quarterly manners column in the Club Etiquette Magazine.
Inventor: Aimee Symington
For over 14 years, I worked in the corporate world as an organizational development consultant for Fortune 100 companies, an international training manager, and most recently as a Senior Vice President at Bank of America where I was the project manager of their change culture initiative overseeing the training of more than 90,000 associates. But in 2003, I wanted to trade in my suit to start my own business. Using my business etiquette certification and experience, I founded a children’s etiquette company called Successful Kids, Inc. to help children learn the essential social skills that will help them for a lifetime.
My main goal in creating Blunders was to make learning about manners fun, but let’s be honest, it’s hard to make things like how to cut your meat funny. With 300 questions in the game, I was challenged to continue to come up with funny cards so I would ask my children, ages 6 and 9, to critique the questions for me. Often times I would come up with what I thought was a really funny question and I’d run to share it with my kids. I’d read them the question expecting hilarious laughter, but instead would sometimes get blank stares and a “no mom, that was NOT funny!” I’d rip up the question and have to start over.
Since coming out with the game, some of my friends say they don’t want to eat with me anymore because they are afraid I will think they have bad manners and use them in one of my questions. I do admit that I have used many personal stories and examples from my life for a lot of the questions! In fact, one day my husband was talking really loudly on his cell phone in a restaurant and so I came home and wrote a question about him doing just that. Nothing is safe. ?
Aparna says:
Jan 9, 2010 at 11:37 am
This is sooooooooooo cool
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Susan says:
Nov 2, 2009 at 2:07 am
Love it! Got to have it! Now, what color? There are so many choices!!! Nice.
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