“To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.”

-- Sir Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727)

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Penguin Wars and Stranger Things

A few years ago we did the same project in science that you are doing now, where students had to invent a board game that taught about simple machines. I am always impressed by the projects I get! Here is one with some pretty involved maps and rules about acquiring territory, in which the opposing players drive little Lego ATV's:



In this next one, called "My Little Boa", there's a simple objective (a Candyland-like path), but the player in possession of the board has to wear a feather boa and a tiara; there is also a song that goes with it. The loser has to wear a plastic bucket on her head.





I loved this one, a trivia game based upon Cheaper by the Dozen, or something like that.



Here is the board all set up for play:


Conclusion: I love my job.
By far the best game, an actually marketable game, was this one called "Penguin Wars," a battle strategy game involving conquest of igloo-building territory and materials.
And here are the little game pieces, drawn by the student in a drawing program, miniaturized, and mounted on foam squares. Have you ever seen penguin snipers or swordsmen? How about heavy gunners? Cavalry!??!!?

3 comments:

JH8 said...

This project looks like a lot of fun! Are we going to do one like it this year also?

AW5 said...

Hey Mrs. Petersen!!
I remember doing something like last year!!

Anonymous said...

Not to be rude but you left out the fact that there is a penguin TANK!!!! how insane is that? would YOU leave your penguin and your tank in the same room together????