Games and puzzles are an easy way to incorporate learning into your day. They can reinforce memory work effortlessly. My kids love to play them in the afternoons when we are done with school or sometimes we just play them for school. Here are the ones I am using for cycle 1 this year with my 4th grader, 2nd grader, and Kindergartener. Hopefully this list will bless you too.
- Professor Noggin Games: Ancient Civilizations. This is a knowledge based game. My kids love quizzing each other about the different topics. They have often told me facts about something, just because they learned them on these cards.
- Professor Noggin Games: Wonders of the World. This one I got new for this year. It is a knowledge based game. I am going to break it out for week 4 when we talk about the 7 wonders of the ancient world. This game also includes other famous structures than just the 7 wonders.
- Zeus on the Loose. This game will be perfect for week 3: Greek gods. It reviews Greek gods while doing some mental math. My kids thought it was great!
- Geo Puzzle: Africa-Middle East. This puzzle is great for getting Africa geography really down. I love how well made the pieces are, and that most countries have their own piece (except really small ones). I am going to add this into our map tracing work to help reinforce our geography time.
- Make your Own Papyrus Kit. This one is super fun! It comes will papyrus all ready to go and instructions to make your own paper. It takes a couple days of soaking and rolling the papyrus…just like the Egyptians did! Even my 5 year old loved this so much! Every time we read a book that week that had the word “papyrus” in in it, she had to stop me and repeat the word. I used these Egyptian activities on week 2 of cycle 1. I found that the 10 commandments led really nicely to talking about the Israelites in Eygpt….so we did a little unit on Egypt this week.
- Egyptian Hieroglyphics activity Kit. This kit has a hieroglyphics decoder wheel, stencils, activity book and some papyrus paper. It also includes stickers to make your own cartouche. My kids loved trying their hand at Egyptian writing.
- History Dates Memory Cube. This is great for helping kids get those history dates down. I developed this for Classical Conversations cycle 1. Each cube has 6 weeks of history dates (or other prompt if the date is not available eg. 10 commandments). I usually pull the first cube out towards the end of week 6. A child rolls the cube and then recites the history sentence associated with the date that is displayed. As we got farther along in the school year, I keep adding more cubes. It really helps to cement those history dates with the history sentences.
- Preposition Pile Up Game. This game is fun for helping memorize prepositions. It has all the prepositions we learn weeks 2-12 plus compound prepositions.
- Famous Figures of Ancient Times. This is a book of paper dolls of famous people to cut out and assemble. There are 2 figures per person–one to color and one already colored. My kids are already super excited to do this one..even my boy! Some figures include: Khufu, Hatshepsut, Moses, Aristotle, Greek Hoplite, Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, Constantine, Augustin of Hippo. and more. Includes a information section on each person too.