Sharing the Addiction

The second blog post in the series of ideas from clusters is half written but it is taking a back seat while I just share a few fun and educational games I’ve been playing.

I followed a link on Twitter which took me to a directory of free flash games and there was an educational category. I had a go at playing quite a few of them and here are some of my favourites. Clicking on the link will take you to the site to play the game.

Numeracy

Tower blaster – probably my favourite game I played. Very strategic – have to get the blocks in correct order before computer team.

Click here to play this game

Maths Power – have to choose numbers to make given answers. I’m not very good at this one! Can’t scan the numbers fast enough and get panicky with the countdown. I’m not going to share my score

Click here to play this game

Literacy

Could see the kids loving this one but I am hopeless at games involving mixed up letters. Still others will do better than me I expect.

Spiderman 2 – Web of Words

Click here to play this game

A very simple game to teach young children to match uppercase and lower case letters with Pooh Bear.

Pooh’s Match ‘n’ Munch

Click here to play this game

Other subjects

This one looks to have been designed for med students and involves cutting open a knee for surgery but I could see older kids being fasinated as they learn how to perform the knee surgery. High level comprehension exercise with a real life context.

Click here to play this game

Brain Safari – a variety of problem solving games

Click here to play this game

Music game – learn the notes and their position on the keyboard.

Click here to play this game

Treasure Dive typing game – type the words on the sharks before they reach you.

Click here to play this game

There are more on the site and I didn’t play them all so you could go and try some more out.

http://www.y8.com/tags/Educational/1

From the same design company that created Samorost 1 and 2 (with 2 being more appropriate educationally) comes another Flash based game designed specifically as an educational game for children. This game has been commissioned by the BBC and is available on their Bitesize Revision website. Thanks to Allanah King for bringing this to my attention through her blog.

You move through eight levels with each level having a set theme for the questions and graphics such as genres and writing, numeracy, and the sciences. You have to first click items or characters within the level to cause a chain of events that will get one of the characters within the level to start asking you questions. This is often a big puzzle in itself – one level that seemed particularly difficult to get started with was one that had a cat in it and my clue to you is that the cat is the key. With each correct answer, you get more hot air in your balloon which, when full, takes you up to the next level. With each incorrect answer, you loose some of the hot air. This would be really motivating for kids (my husband played it right through all eight levels after he saw it sitting open on the screen and he is a big kid!)