Jeanette:

Life and growing up is one big methodological and scientific experiment. Think about all you have evaluated, tried, failed, learned from etc. You cannot be taught all of these methods from a fabricated game that someone wants to design.

Thats the point I was making in my first post...

This is true. Still, a game would not hurt. That said, I believe a kid could learn more from an educational toy than what they would from a game.


I stand corrected. A kid could learn as much from an educational game as they would from an educational toy.

Jeanette Isabelle

Board games recommendations from the self-proclaimed big brains (MENSA)

http://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Mensa_Select#

Orienteering?


Jerry (a science teacher)

Simply have them do science and seek rational answers to questions. The scientific method can be applied at any level and kids are often natural scientists. As in, "Dad told me never to play with fire or I will get a licking. Now that is a testable hypothesis...."

I appreciate your thoughts.



One of the point's is to teach how to "do science" and how to recognize a "rational answer." There are hard-won and specific techniques that may seem counterintuitive and, at the least, are not often witnessed in everyday life.



Agreed. And kids love games, which makes a scientific-method-teaching game or dozen seem a good idea.



You learned the "testable hypothesis" concept somewhere! I doubt the concept, or how to implement it, is understood by most. Neither the concept or implementation are simple; they remain the most often debated parts of science in every field.

+1!

We did an activity at a Beaveree last weekend that was a bit of a treasure hunt. We had the kids walk so many paces North into the forest to a specific tree. On each tree was a poster with a picture, number and a letter.

Kind of like this:

# L
Picture


Once they found the tree, they had a sheet to write their findings on. A miniature version of each number and picture was on the sheet they were given, with a blank line above it. They had to write the letter onto the corresponding blank line.

Kind of like this:

___________
Picture
Letter


Once they had all the letters figured out, they had to unscramble the letters to figure out the words. Together, the words told them where the treasure was.

Because of their age, we just let them run from tree to tree to find the posters. You could easily modify this game to include compass navigation to each tree along the way.

There is a sort of riddle game, wherein the person who knows the riddle describes a scene (observation). The other players then ask yes-or-no questions and try to work out what happened based on the answers (i.e. they form hypotheses of what may have happened to result in the initial observation, then ask questions to test those hypotheses).

Some examples of initial observations:

"A man is found naked and dead in the middle of a bare field. He is holding a straw in his hand." (People usually start with questions such as "Was he bleeding?" "Were any bones broken?" "Was there any mud on the ground?" etc.)

"John and Marsha are found dead on the floor in a puddle of water." ("Are any weapons nearby?" "Were John and Marsha in love?" etc.)

A man walks into a restaurant, orders, takes one bite of his selection, then shoots himself. ("Is what he ordered relevant to his suicide?" "Was his food poisoned?" etc.)

Is this something commercially available?

While not specific to understanding the scientific method, there are games out there that provide the basis for critical thinking. A number of years ago I used to be a facilitator for Project Wild. Project Wild was developed in part to address the needs for educational programs to incorporate into their curriculum, environmental education. Project Wild sought to provide students, through games/activities an opportunity to explore a variety of critical thinking approaches to understanding environmental principals.

One game I almost always presented was “Oh Deer”. It examines available resources in population dynamics.

Oh Deer

The purpose is not to teach what to think about a particular subject, but obtain and apply critical thinking skills.

Pete