Game Studies Books

As a homeschooling mom, I use this book and its Our Country Write & Read Books counterpart as Social Studies practice books. I introduce my son to the different concepts, then we use the corresponding mini books for writing and coloring activities. Both books offer fun mini book pages for kindergartners-first graders but need to be supplemented with a little extra reading to reinforce ideas. Not a problem if you live near a good library.

There are pre-drawn pictures and there are spaces for writing. Some pages have blank boxes for the students to draw in. There are 2 book pages for 1-8.5" x 11". Each book is about 6 book pages long. There are 2 books that are for students who are slightly more able to be creative. "A City Walk" describes buildings and asks the student to draw an example and name the type of building. For very creative students, they can create their own world.

I like that my students may have to interview an adult briefly to find out what they do in their job. They may even have to take a page home to ask their parents.

It's suggested for K-2, but I picked it up for my 7-9th graders in Inclusion for those who are around that ability level. The pages do look 'young' for 7-9th graders, but provide excellent information for the student to explore their own world.

From the table of contents the book titles (after the colon are my comments) are:
1. Neighborhoods & Communities
-Home, Sweet Home: different places where people live and proximety to the other (far and close)
-What is in a Neighborhood?: About where the student lives, naming neighbors they know, and how special their neighborhood is.
-Communities Big and Small: About the different places a community can be (rural, suburb, country, cities)
-Postcards from the Country: mini-letters (postcards) that ask the student to describe some things they might see in the country and draw pictures
-A City Walk: interacting with the community, places that are familiar to the student
-I Travel: A story about the different ways people use to travel in a city
-Community Signs: signs that might be in your city/town prompts to fill in the blank and check to see what the student knows about what a sign says.
-My Very Own Community: A virtual blank book where a student can take all the previous 'books' and knowledge and make up their own place to live.
2. People In the Community
-Meet Community Helpers: A few jobs prompts to describe what the person does. Asks student to draw mostly their own pictures.
-What Do They Do?: More jobs, less drawing, more poetically prompting to the students.
-From Farm to Me: Describes the farmer's job of making corn get to your dinner table.
-I am a Good Citizen: Student needs to know where they live, And what it means to help people, and what they do to contribute to where they live
3. Maps & Geography
- Two Views: What the world looks from the front and from above, pre-map reading skills
-Maps show Places: parts of maps. Student is prompted to fill in blanks and encouraged to have full sentance answers.
-Directions Show Which Way: North, South, East, West asks students to follow directions and then give directions for someone else.
"About the Author Template"

This is a helpful resource. What I find most useful is the clear structure for each game show. With some tweaking, a catechist could use any of the games in a variety of settings, from a small group to a larger class. Even though the games are clearly explained, it is still time consuming to "stage" any of them because of the supplies the host/teacher needs to assemble. Also, if you want to adapt the questions to your specific curriculum/chapter/unit, you'll have to write the questions yourself. Overall, I think this is a good kick start for your own creative thinking.

Think way back to your years in school. Do you remember playing a game of classroom "baseball" to review important information before a big test? I can still remember the question and answer from our government class that gave our team the "grand slam."

Do you remember "Dale's Cone of Learning" from your teacher training? Dale Edgar's model is that students learn best through direct experience, simulations, games and excercises.

If you would like to add fun "game show" style learning to your programs, please get a copy of the latest spiral bound book from St. Mary's Press: "Ready to Go Game Shows that Teach Serious-Stuff-Bible Edition" by Michael Theisen. This little book contains a dozen learning activities modeled after popular current shows such "Who Wants to Be a Millonaire," "Wheel of Fortune" and others. By the way, a variation of the baseball game I mentioned above is in this book.

Preparation for these games is easy and the supply list is, in typical St. Mary's Press style, inexpensive and easy to obtain. A working knowledge of the game shows helps, but is not required. Unless your teens have been raised in a media vacuum, they will recognize and be ready to play these games. If, however, it is you who has been in the media void, Michael explains the games in a clear, easy manner. The included diagrams for the room set up will help you to quickly construct the right environment. Questions and answers are clearly listed for the Bible based subjects and include simple notes for the "teachable moment."

Both classroom school teachers and volunteer teachers will find this volume useful. You will also like the size of this book. It is small and light which makes it easy to put into a book bag. The spiral binding lets the book lay flat for easy reading. We need more spiral bound resources!

I would invite you to encourage your teams to create their own question sets for future games. What a great project for older teens to do- create questions and games for young teens. The old quote, "If you would truly know something, teach it." applies here.

"Who wants to be a better teacher?" You will be when you use your copy of "Ready to Go Game Shows."

And that's my final answer

This is a relatively good quiz book, but the author totally skips over John 17! How can anyone disregard one of Jesus' major prayers? I was disappointed to come to this section in this book to find that there was nothing on John 17.

We use this book to quiz our youth at our church as well as a game book. We like this book because it covers the entire Bible and follows the Bible in sequential format, that is from Genesis to Revelation. This book can be used as a resourse book as well. There is an answer key in the book for all the questions and the book provides scriptural references for all questions.

Great book for group studies and self learning. I enjoyed this book with my bothers in Christ during Home Cell Group Meetings.And everyone agreed it was great.I also found it to be good for newborn believer who want to get started and gain some understand of the Bible. It can also be use for parties and family gathering as a Biblical Trivia Game. you just can go wrong with this book because it supply you with the answers as well.Reading some of the Bible is require for a full understanding of the questions in the book.
I recommend it to everybody in good faith, it's lots of fun learning.

Hector Perez
Glory of Christ Church
Bronx,NY

This quiz book contains tons of trivia about every book of the Bible, with explinations of every answer. It also has great background information on the various books. However, it's very hard to look up the answers, if you, like me, are too lazy to write your answers down and want to know the answer as soon as you read the question. The answers are listed by chapter number, not by chapter subject. I was constantly losing my place and forgetting what number chapter I was on. Still, it was very interesting and a lot of fun.

These games are old, simple, and easy. Many can be played by both children and adults. I like them and use them at family get togethers.

I have all the Party Game Books and believe it or not,Ifound this one to be the best!... There are games for kids as well asadults and lots that can be adapted to both. In the back of the book there is a list of all the games along with an age grid which has stars that tell you what age the game would be appropriate for. There is nothing too outrageous and nothing off color but, again, the games are pretty adaptable! There are games that would be great at a backyard carnival and instructions for some of the classics. Its just a generally nice game book to have for reference if you are into games. My 7 year old had a blast at a New Years Eve party that I gave for him and 5 other 7 year olds. Most of my ideas came from this book. END

Teachers often want to find a way to include more music into the classroom, but finding ways to do this is difficult, especially since few schools have a classroom music curriculum. This book and it's first volume companion feature a variety of games that are easy to drop into the curriculum. The games are for different age and size groups, and there is an index that puts the games into different age groups. The suggestions are clear, the purposes of the games are clear, and the instructions are good. You might only use five or six games out of this book, but they will be worth it!

I have the 1968 Dover edition which is an unabridged and corrected republication of the original published in 1938. The majority of the corrections are of the typographical type and the rest are 'cooks' (endings shown to be in error) that are corrected in the Dover edition. This book is similar to Fine's "Basic Chess Endings" although not as detailed. As the title suggests, most of the studies are compositions by various composers between 1893-1935, although there are a few positions that were taken from games played in that same time period. The studies are arranged in classifications ranging from pawns-only to the various combinations of pieces. This book is not 'dry' reading like Fine's BCE since any one of the positions in this book could be encountered in a game. I found this book to be an enjoyable way to learn endgames since the positions are similar to those I have encountered in my games. I would recommend this book for players rated B-class (1600-1700) and above.

This was a useful book. It helped keep my son writing during his summer break.

so many cool questions

This book is a good source of ideas and a practical guide forapplication of the ideas. It even includes ideas on how to trackone's money and how to establish rates for services. A simple yet informative book for young entrepreneurs.