Lemonade Stand is a great educational game for young students. It allows them to go into the business world and try to make as much profit as they can selling lemonade. The students have to think mathmatically while looking at the weather in order to gain the profit. For example, if the weather report suggests 60 degrees with rain, it's smart not to buy a lot of lemonade items because many people won't buy a cup. This game is very addicting and many students probably won't even realize they are dealing with math as they play.
Concentration is a great game for any age group. It relies on memorization skills to try and find matches on the board. It's important that students learn how to memorize certain things while in school. They need to memorize spelling words, history concepts, and science experiments. Concentration will help every student practice the concept of memorization so that they become better at it in the future.
Rush hour is an educational game that uses a mathmatical concept. The object of this game is to successfully move the cars across the grid to try and free the red bug and make it to the exit. This game gets harder after each level and each level requires the player to do some thinking. To play this game you just click on the car you want to move, and drag it to an open grid space. It's really easy.
Connect Four is a great game for students to play. The game is played by clicking on one of the seven spaces and dropping it in a circular piece. The object is to try and get 4 in a row before the computer does. This game uses mathmatical reasoning in which students have to observe the playing area, looking up, across, and diagonally and strategically place their move.
Hangman is a guessing game in which students guess letters and try and figure out the word. Each time a wrong letter is guessed parts of man being hung shows up. When every part of him is shown the game is over. This game is very easy to play. All you do is press in a letter on the keyboard and if it is in the word the letter will appear, but if the letter does not exist a noise will be made and part of the guy will show up. Hangman is a great educational game for students. It allows them to guess letters and try and figure out words. This can allow them to recognize the total number of letters in the word and try and strategically figure it out. The hard part is figuring out what letters to guess first, but looking at it mathmatically may be a good thing to guess the most commonly used letters first.
Breakout is a really fun game that all students will enjoy. All you do is move the mouse, which controlls the platform and try to hit the ball into the blocks up above. The object is to hit or break all the blocks. Breakout uses geometry skills when you knock the ball into the wall. Younger students will not even realize this and when you tell them, they may be excited.
Arithmetic 24 is a educational game dealing with math. The object is to use the four randomly selected cards to try and form an equation by multiplying, dividing, adding, subtracting, or using the parenthesis and obtain 24 as the answer. This game involves lots of thinking and is time consuming. It may be better for students to be in groups so they can express their ideas about the four cards that were drawn.
Simon is another memory based game that will help students remember certain ideas expressed in class. The computer player starts a sequence and you have to follow it by clicking on the colors that the computer pressed in the same exact order. This game can be used with any student in any grade level. Simon helps your brain focus on memorizing certain combinations in a fun and enjoyable way.
Link to Northern Michigan University
Latest update to this document: 22 March 2002
Kyle Antilla: kyantill@nmu.edu.