Equate – The Equation Thinking Game

Equate is a board game that will challenge you in dealing with equations.  Think of it as though it is a bit like Scrabble but with a twist on mathematics instead of letters. The goal of the game is to obtain a high score as often as you can by creating equations  and position them horizontally or vertically. 

In a way it is a different kind of board game where the family can have fun creating equations in a crossword-style. Equate is a great math board game for family and classroom. You can earn higher scores using division or fraction tiles and landing on premium board positions. 

Advantages in playing Equate are:

• Learning fractions as you play.
• Develop a strategy while playing.
• Improve thinking skills including practicing critical thinking, engaging in creative reasoning, and utilizing spatial reasoning.
• Develop number sense by practicing mental computation, master addition and multiplication facts, learn fraction concepts.
• Use algebraic reasoning.

The Equate Junior Tile Set is a friendly tile set for beginners. This set contains 176 tiles including whole numbers with more 0s and 1s than the Original Tile Set, fractions with denominator 2, the four basic operations with more addition and subtraction tiles than multiplication and division tiles and equal symbols.

The Equate Advanced Tile Set contains 197 tiles including negative and positive integers, integer exponents, fractions, the four basic operations, and equal symbols.

This game is perfect for 2 to 4 players or teams. Also you can have many levels of play for ages 8 to adult.

This is a great way to practice doing math while having fun with your friends or family.  

Equate The Equation Thinking Game and the Equate Junior Tile Set are available for purchase on the online store of Conceptual Math Media.  Also available on their store is the Equate Advanced Tile Set and the Original Tile Set.  Tile Sets are sold for the price of $10 US and the game is sold for the price of $26 US.

Disclaimer: These products have been provided courtesy of Conceptual Math Media. for review purposes. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.

Pirate Talk

Pirate Talk – Receptive & Expressive Language Game
By Super Duper Publications

Pirate Talk was the second game that attracted my interest when I was checking the offered games from Super Duper Publications. This particular game is basically enforcing communications skills.   Actually seven communication skills are reinforced with this game.   Three of them are receptive – Sentence Repetition, Answering Questions, and Following Directions.  Four are expressive – Categorizing, Inferencing, Describing, and Social Skills.  

The game includes an 18x18 inches game board, 150 color-coded receptive and expressive language cards, 6 pirate players pieces, 100 gold coins and an electronic spinner (1-3).

It’s easy to play Pirate Talk.  The kids were eager to play this new game when I opened it up.  It was a great way to encourage them to express themselves based on the images I would show to them.   With their game pieces, they would move from island to island on the board game and collect gold coins when they would answer properly to their questions.   Depending of the age of the child you can opt to ask the receptive or expressive questions.  Five categories of social interaction is included in this game: School, People, Home, Community, and Activities.   When we played, I would pick the category myself and choose a card.   I would ask the child to come near me as I showed the image and ask the questions.  See the card below for an example of questions asked on the receptive or expressive language skill.

My kids had a blast playing this game together and asked for more when I decided that we were done.   They love the fact that the game is based on a pirate theme and that it encourages them to express themselves based on selected situations.  

My only disappointment is that our electronic spinner isn’t working anymore.   Somehow it died rather quickly.   I find that replacing the batteries is quite expensive.  Fortunately, one of my sons remembered that he had a dice that had the 1-3 faces repeated (compared to a regular dice).   So we are using this dice and honestly I think I prefer the dice over the electronic spinner which gets annoying with the noise it makes.

The Pirate Talk Board Game is available at the Super Duper Publications website for the price of 54.95$.

It is also available on amazon.ca and amazon.com.

  

Disclaimer: I received a copy of the game for review purposes from KidStuff PR and Super Duper Publications, Inc. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.

Grammar Gumballs

Grammar Gumballs
By Super Duper Publications

Recently I was offered to review some educational games from Super Duper Publications.  I had never heard of them and proceeded to see the games offered to review.  Two immediately attracted my eyes and interest.

The first game is Grammar Gumballs.   This sweet game (no pun intended!) is perfect to help you teach and reinforce basic grammar skills in younger levels from PreK to grade 3.

This interesting game will help you reinforce nine of the early morphemes and grammatical structures – Present Progressive Verbs, Irregular Past Tense Verbs, Subjective Pronouns, Copula Verbs (Is/Are), Regular Plurals, Possessive Nouns, Regular Past Tense Verbs, Irregular Plurals, Possessive Pronouns.  Grammar Gumballs will includes five levels of difficulty for each illustrations.

To play, you first need to fill the gumball machine board game with the gumball tokens.  Choose the card set you wish to teach.  I decided to let the kids pick their own cards as we were playing.  That way we were able to review different Grammar skills.   Depending of the child I asked some questions which he/she had to answer.   Once the questions were answered correctly, I allowed my child to spin the spinner in order to determine how many gumballs he/she could take from the machine.   The goal is to have the most gumballs in your hands to be the winner.

We played this game with all the kids (even if I had a grade 4 and a grade 7 child).  They all wanted to have a turn.   I somewhat twisted the questions to make them a bit more difficult for my oldest son.   We had a blast playing and when we were done, but my oldest and my youngest had the same amount of gumballs.  

I asked them if they liked the game.  They all responded positively to it and said they want to play more.   I find the game beneficial to reinforce my kids grammar lessons and to encourage them to make complete sentences when needed.   It was definitively a great game to explore and we will use it numerous times in the weeks to come.  

The book also contains a CD which allows you to print some useful exercises that your kids can use to practice their understanding of the proper grammar skills that you want him/her to review.   The pages are also reproducible inside the teacher’s book.   But having the CD is very useful as you can simple print them when you need them.  (see below for an example)

This game is also perfect for kids who have language or learning difficulties.

Grammar Gumballs Board Game is available at Super Duper Publications for the price of 49.95$ US.   Another book can also be purchased for the price of 34.95$ US.  That book is titled Grammar Gumballs 2 and includes lessons on adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, copula verbs (Was/Were), Do/Does, First Person Pronouns (I, Me, We, Us), Negation, Prepositions, Present Perfect Verbs (Has/Have).

Both items are also available on amazon.com!

Disclaimer: I received a copy of the game for review purposes from KidStuff PR and Super Duper Publications, Inc. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.