If you thought Africa was all desert, grassland, and safari animals, think again! The Serengeti-Mara ecosystem is one of the most diverse on the planet with over 15,000 square miles of land that is home to grassland, woodland, wetland, and dryland species of plants and animals, and many of them need a combination of these … Read more
Happy children are what I LOVE to see, and playing lots of games means I get to see these smiling faces all the time and especially lately with this magnetic sudoku game from Learning Resources. It checks all the boxes for young gamers – the pieces are magnetic so they don’t slide around. This is … Read more
Greetings Sir/Madam Mayor of the most perfect, happiest-ever city! This is your character in Happy City, a city-building card game for 2-5 players, ages 10+, in about 30 minutes of strategic, productive competitive fun where the goal is to grow your city to ten building types of your choice. Players each begin their city with … Read more
Dexterity games are great for motor skills but are also a great way for kids to spend time with older family members like grandparents! Not all grandparents want to learn a new strategy game, but they’re almost always up for something like Crazy Tower. Crazy Tower is a dexterity/building game with a crazy … Read more
One of the reasons we use so many games for math instruction is that games often require deductive and inductive reasoning, or thinking forwards and backwards about a problem. Some games, like Wilson & SHEP, feature these deductive reasoning skills but at the level of younger children. Six years old, in this case! Games … Read more
Many moms I’ve talked to are resistant to the idea of gameschooling because they don’t like to play games. Or so they think… Today’s games are not like the games of our childhood. They’re clever, beautifully designed, and companies like Blue Orange have taken classic games like memory and spruced them up a bit … Read more
Board game art has come a long long way from the games of my childhood, and Shifting Stones, a new game from Gamewright Games, incorporates lots of really fun art elements that I find so appealing! I see whispers of Scandinavian and other folk art in these beautifully designed tiles, which just adds another layer of … Read more
Lots of kids want a pet and they all PROMISE they’ll be the one to look after it. Before taking the plunge, maybe try out this game where players MUST care for Honga, a very needy saber-toothed tiger. Maybe the experience of making sure he’s attended to will make kids think twice about wanting a … Read more
Could you manage finding your way in a new place with just a map and a compass? You could do it. Kids could totally do it! Especially if they had a little practice under their belts, especially if the practice came in a play-based way that threw some challenges in their path to really test … Read more
Learning by doing is usually the best way to master anything new. In the case of astronomy, this isn’t possible, but there are plenty of other ways to create experiential learning of space. Planet Voyagers, from Simply Fun, uses information gained by some of the probes that have visited space and incorporates information from data … Read more