"'Education is the Science of Relations'; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our business is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid as many as may be of––
'Those first-born affinities,
That fit our new existence to existing things.'"

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education
with a quote from The Prelude by William Wordsworth

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Geo Bee, and how to learn facts

Today we had our first Families of Faith Geography Bee focusing on the United States. Our family spent the term creating our own state sheets so my dss would have at least been exposed to states, capitols, nicknames, flowers, birds, and trees. As the bee approached, though, I knew that they knew very few of the facts they filled out over the past several weeks.

I let them play the states and capitols games at sheppardsoftware.com a few times, and before long they knew their state capitols! There's nothing like trivia games for learning facts. We seem to remember even better the ones we get wrong, and we also review what we do know.

I went hunting for other online games for the state nicknames and symbols. I found a web site called purposegames.com that has dozens upon dozens of these games for a variety of subjects. They have simple but nice graphics, and the games are no more than matching, yet they are a fun and effective way to drill facts. I had the kids playing them this morning and by noon they knew a lot of those symbols and nicknames!

You can register for free at purposegames.com and create your own games, too, should you not be able to find just the right one already made. Hmmm, maybe a saints game, since they actually don't appear to have one yet...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great idea. We do use computer games but I hadn't really thought about these trivia games. Thanks for the tip!