Freerice Game - with a myriad of categories to try out.

An oldie but a goodie - Freerice is an educational online game that helps kids with Vocabulary, Maths - including Times Tables and Basic Maths - along with a wide range of extra categories, such as: Flags, Countries, Ancient History, Movies, Quotations, Chemical Symbols, Biology, Languages, Foods of the World, Current Affairs.... 

For each correct answer, 10 grains of rice are donated to feed people dealing with famine in Third World countries through the United Nations World Food program.  

The best part? The game is self-levelling so it adjusts to the level the kids are working at, but keeps making it a little more challenging to increase their capabilities, without making it so hard that they don't want to do it. I realise that many of the subjects probably sound out of the park for a lot of our kids - but because it adjusts to their level, it isn't beyond the realms of possibility. 

https://freerice.com/categories

This could be useful in most learning areas - maybe a class competition? Teams to compete against each other?  Hmm - maybe a teacher competition??  😉

Check it out when you get a moment. 

Purple People Eaters.

 (Re posting this as it accidentally got deleted!) 

One of our recent activities with our beautiful Special Ed group was making Purple People Eaters - and playing the song along with actions .. which certainly tickled Isiah's fancy!

Ms. Squires spent the weekend making the purple pompoms we needed as I couldn't source them in town - and I think they turned out way better than they would have been with just ordinary pompoms.  We added blue or pink wings to these and 1 big googly eye along with a glittery horn in either pink or blue to match the wings.  These all went together using the magic of Glue Dots - to make a whole 'flock?'/'herd?'/'company?' of Purple People Eaters. 

I've sent the song link through to Ms. Juliet for the class to listen to again - and we all think that it would be a great idea if Ms. Fransina would demonstrate the song and the actions for us all.     😉😉

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jV-E09efRE

Game Based Learning Articles from Edutopia

Okay - a bit of a hiccup to the start of Term 2 - nothing is ever meant to be easy but let's get this back on track again.  

Below are some links from Edutopia - mainly about Game-Based Learning.  As I am not a teacher, I have no idea of how useful these could be, but I am just tossing it out there for you on the off chance that there may be something that you can use. It is a US based site and probably a 'slightly' different clientele than ours, but you never know – there may be a small gem you can use or adapt for your needs.

https://www.edutopia.org/article/10-free-financial-literacy-games-high-school-students

https://www.edutopia.org/article/using-gamification-increase-engagement-during-hybrid-learning

https://www.edutopia.org/article/game-based-learning-middle-school-math

https://www.edutopia.org/article/turning-math-game

https://www.edutopia.org/article/does-our-natural-affinity-games-have-place-classroom

https://www.edutopia.org/article/when-implementing-games-your-classroom-dont-forget-about-chess

https://www.edutopia.org/article/coding-across-curriculum