I introduced a new game to my kids this year for continents and oceans. This is always a topic that a good many second graders absolutely latch onto. Unfortunately, there are others that while interested, just don't have enough background knowledge to make this broad info about the world stick. I do the usual continents and oceans songs and we read books (I love National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book of the World - I bought two). So, my students have a good introduction to continents and oceans, but seemed to need a way to practice that knowledge in a fun way. My goal in creating this game was to find a way to get kids to talk...a lot... about continents and oceans. I also wanted this voluminous talking (wink) not to be controlled by a single sentence frame or two, but to still be accessible to all of my students, many of which are English Language Learners. This is what I came up with, with a little help from my second grade team (thanks gals). The premise is similar to the classic game Battleship, in that it is a screen game. Each kid sees only their side of the screen, one is a blank world map with a grid overlay (no continents or oceans labeled), and the other is the same world map, but with the continents and oceans labeled. The kid with the blank map chooses a card from the stack and reads it aloud. An example is, "What continent is in both B3 and B4?" That student finds boxes B3 and B4 and decides which continent shares both of those spaces. The student using the labeled map checks that answer and confirms or gives help in finding the correct answer. While this game is very simple, the students in my class were engaged in a lot of talking about the subject (my favorite thing is to stand back and listen to on-topic talking, so nerdy). Later, I added more cards about the cardinal directions, the Equator, and the Prime Meridian, and those are included with the game. One of my first TPT products, and still my best seller, was a continents and oceans game, which we also still play. You can get the bundle of both them and get a discount. To go along with this, I made a video of how to make the cool table tent show in the picture. My husband and I had a competition to see who could make the most sturdy table tent. My iterations were on the bizzare side. His, of course, won. Dang those spatially talented people! This was my first instruction video, so take that into consideration while watching!
