Gameschooling Science | Science Games for Your Homeschool

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Waldock Way. I'm Jessica. Today's video is going to be a game school video. All week long, I have been sharing our favorite games off of our game school shelves based off of subjects. If you've missed it, I've already shared math, language arts and geography and history, and I will link them right up here in case you want to go back and catch those before watching this one, which is science. Now, I did a series very similar to this about three years ago. So if you have younger kids, you may want to check those videos out because those would have been when Emily was around six to seven kindergarten or first grade. And I will link that series in the description box for you. So without further ado, let's jump into the science game. This is in no particular order. I'm just going to grab what's surrounding me because they're literally surrounding me. All right. First up, we have genius games. Cytosis, which is a cell biology game. This is kind of how the game plays. It's a ten plus two to five players. And I will say this is a 60 to 90 minute game. So this is a longer game play, which for some people is OK for others isn't. So if you don't like long game plays, you might want to skip this one. It's one of the longer ones that I think we have. Next, we have scabs and guts. This is a fun trivia based game about the human body. It is for six plus. So younger kids can play. It's hilarious because they're even going to be doing like things with their body. It's like a yucky, funny, potty humor type of approach to human body. Most kids are going to love it. By the same maker, we have bugs and slugs. The same kind of trivia based game all about bugs. Again, six plus two to six players. So good for younger kids. Another one that is great for younger kids is a wild craft. This is actually a cooperative game. So you're going to be playing the game together. And it is good for ages four up. Now, it is a little a little long for a four year old. It's like a 45 minute game. But I think there's probably some ways that you could make it a little bit shorter, like maybe not make it like not go all the way to grandma's house, which would be the very end of the board. Maybe you could pick somewhere else that you're going to stop. Or instead of going and coming back, you could just get there and that could be the end of it. But it is a cooperative game. It is amazing because it's actually about herbs and how herbs can help like common ailments, for example, diarrhea. That one comes to mind because it's Emily's favorite and it makes her giggle every time that one comes up. So it's it's really, really fun and really educational. Like I learn a ton playing that along the same lines, but for a little bit older crew is a planted. This is a game of nature and nurture. It is really fun for two to five players. Ten and up is what it's recommended for. I don't know. It does 20 to 30 minutes. So a little bit of a shorter game play. Next, we have a rock on. This was a fun addition to a rock unit a while back. It is I'm going to try not to make a mess when I open it. It is an actual collection of rocks. They're kind of a mess in this bag right now. And then you get these bingo cards. So it's kind of like a rock based bingo game. And you're actually playing it with the rocks that are in the game. And then there's also these cards that come with it that tell you more about each rock. If you have a kid who loves rocks, this is a great rock collector. It's a great way to add some rocks to their collection and add some games to it as well. Camp, this is one of my top recommended games. Like I recommend this probably the most because it has four different levels of gameplay. So the questions on the back have these little cards. Well, it's on the front, too, but here I'll just show you what a card looks like. And there's these little characters you can see, like the little person and then how they get older. So there's four different levels of different questions. So ranging from something like what kind of way this is camp, too. So they're going to be a little bit harder. I actually bought the expansion cards for this because we play it so often. And I'll pull one that's not a second. What is the name of the box you store your fishing lures in a toolbox, a tackle box or a lunch box? So that's level one. Level two is what is the moisture found on the grass early in the morning called? Do you sleep or ice? What could what would you use a slip sinker with? This is number three, a rubber worm, a hula hopper or a daredevil. And then number four is what do not hatches store insects for winter consumption? Where do they store it and nest bark crevices or underground? So it is one of the few board games that varies from what they claim ages four to ninety nine. And I would 100 percent agree with that, especially if you have a kid who likes out maybe even younger. And if you have a three year old that really likes the outdoors, they could probably even play it and enjoy it. As long as you're not expecting them to read the questions, obviously. But that's probably the game I recommend the most because it's a lot of fun. Everybody can play. Everybody can be challenged where they're at individually. And the little characters that you play like are beavers and mice, and they're adorable. Next, we have organ attack. This is a super fun yet hilarious game where you are literally trying to protect your own organs while attacking your friends and family's organs in the game that are playing with you. This particular one comes with the expansion to be able to play with up to six players. They recommend it for ages ten up. It's one of those games that's funny and hilarious. It kind of reminds me of exploding kittens and that like just crazy game that happens to be educational, but you definitely don't feel like it's not trivia based. You don't feel like it's educational at all. We also have peptide. Now, this is another one by Genius Games. They actually have quite a few. So this particular version is peptide, which is a protein building game. Then they have virulence, which is an infectious card game. They have ion, which is a compound building game, and they have covalence, which is a molecule building game. All of these are card games. They are all, let's see, at least two players, and they're all around the 20 to 30 minutes. Let's see, two to four players on covalence, two to seven on ion, two to five on virulence and peptide. And they all play in about 20 to 30 minutes. If you are looking for kind of a more advanced concept or, you know, in science game, they're definitely a company to check out everything we've played by them we've really enjoyed. Next up, we have animal trivia. This is the animal trivia challenge. I talked about the geography trivia challenge in the geography and history video. In fact, we also have the science trivia challenge as well. We really enjoy these. We've got these this year, so it's the first year that we've played them. The questions that they ask, what I really like is that there's a beginner and an advanced side. So you can ask either of the questions depending on where you're at. But they also have something that they do where they rank it, which is we play a ton of trivia games, and it's something I've never had a trivia game have us do before. So it's really been fun because, for example, it will be like rank the following horse breeds from fastest to slowest over a shortest distance. Quarter horse, Arabian and thoroughbred. And it just makes you think about, you know, animals and science and different things kind of in a way you hadn't before. And so I really, really like that part of that game. Next, we have a ton of flux, which if you like flux, you should look them up because there's a ton of different ones here. We have anatomy, astronomy, nature and chemistry. And it's basically a card game with ever changing rules, because with almost every card that you play, there's going to be some kind of rule change. So it's something that keeps you on your toes. It plays pretty quickly. I don't think. Yeah, it plays within five to 20 minutes and you can have up to six players. So two to six players. And it plays pretty quickly and it doesn't need a lot of space. So that's always nice. You can look up and see if there's a flux in a specific topic that you want, because there are tons of them, like tons, not just science. OK, next we have brain box. I talked about this in our geography and history video as well. There are tons of these. I think we own 16 different ones. We love using them for unit studies. This is under the sea. So obviously we use this for our ocean unit study recently. What you do is you study the front of the card while the timer is going, which is ten seconds. When the ten seconds is over, you roll a dice and you have to answer whatever question. So, for example, how many clownfish can you see? Do the clownfish have stripes or spots? Can you see any bubbles? What color are the tails? Can are all the fish facing the same direction? And there's also normally like a fact on there as well. So it's one of those games where you're learning something about it, but you're also challenging your brain. It's kind of like one of those brain training type things because you're having to try to remember what you saw because you don't get to see it while the questions being asked. So it's really we really enjoy it. We have a ton of them. Like I said, look at brain box and whatever topic you're studying in your home school and see if they have one because we have dinosaurs, sea bugs. There's tons of geography and history based ones, too. There's math, art. I mean, like tons of them. STEM. What is this STEM family battle? I know it was some kind of battle. It is interesting, but we like it. So it says ages 12 to adult. Emily's been playing since she was like nine. The only thing I will say is the technology portion. Sometimes we have to help her out because there's things in here that ask. Like, for example, there was one about a floppy disk. Emily has no clue what a floppy disk is like. She's never even seen a floppy disk. Me and Kevin were like, oh, we know that answer. She has zero clue, but I'm not sure a 12 year old would either. I mean, I barely use them, so I can't imagine a 12 year old would know what one is either. So that's probably my only complaint about that is that sometimes the technology can be a little dated or it can date itself. But it is a lot of fun trivia that is STEM based and on each card, plus the game board is a lot of fun. But on each card, it has all a question for each of the categories. And you basically are trying to answer the questions depending on where you landed on the board. And they have flyweight questions and heavyweight questions. So, again, one of those games where it has two different like kind of beginner and advanced. So Emily normally plays beginner. And Kevin and I will play advanced, especially on the technology questions, because you can also flip the card back and forth depending on what category it is. Here is another one of those genius games. This is periodic. It is a game based on the periodic table. It transforms the table into a mental obstacle course. Basically, it is a lot of fun. Let's see. It is 10 plus. It is a little bit of a longer game. Again, it's 40 to 60 minutes and it's two to five players. But we really enjoy that one as an addition to our science games. Totally gross. This was probably one of the first science games that I ever got for Emily. It's really not all that gross. It is fun science in the sense that like I think one of the questions one time was about farts, which I'm never going to forget because Emily loved it. The only thing that I would say is gross is that you use like slime that comes with a thing of slime. We've even sometimes used thinking putty because it's not as slimy. And basically, as you get the questions right, you're stretching your slime to try to reach. But the questions, like I said, are hilarious. Like, for example, true or false, some people make omelets of tarantula eggs. True. You can get this delicious dish in some parts of Brazil. Where does your body operate? It's chemical waste plant filtering gunk out of your body, your heart, your kidneys or your spine. How much air? Here it is. How much air on average does a fart contain? Three ounces, three gallons or three tons? That's three ounces. They aren't that big, but they make up for their size with their strength. So it's funny stuff. I mean, scientific, but funny. So if you have a kid who, you know, likes potty humor and like that kind of funny stuff and maybe you want to get them more interested in science, this is definitely the game for that. Plus, it's a fun family game night game because you're going to be cracking up and laughing together because of the questions that it asks. Like, they're hilarious. OK, next is going to be a lot of the same things. But I didn't want to miss a topic that somebody might have wanted. So these are the stack I'm going to show you right now are all memory games. They're all memory games from a company called Lawrence King. They are absolutely this company makes beautiful games. So they have memory games and they have bingo games. I'm pretty sure we own almost all of them because the games themselves are absolutely gorgeous. The illustrations are gorgeous. The quality is super nice. And there's just it's so amazing. So this one is pick a flower. So it's, you know, a flower and you match it. This one is butterfly wings. So you are matching the butterfly wings. I think if I'm correct, you're open. Yeah, you're matching. It's open wings to its closed wings. Match a pair of birds. You're matching the female to the male. Match a leaf. You are matching a close up leaf to the tree that it comes from. Dogs and puppies. You're matching the puppy to the dog itself to the older adult dog. Same thing with cats and kittens. And then match a track. You're matching the animal's track to the animal itself. So all of those are a lot of fun because it's not like your standard. You're matching the exact same thing to the exact same thing. You have to think a little bit like which, you know, male bird versus which female bird. So it's a lot of fun. And you like memory. So even young kids can play it because they don't have there's no reading involved. Now, the bingos are equally beautiful. What I love most about the Lawrence King games is they all come with some sort of little booklet that tells you more about whatever the animal is or the tree or the track or whatever. Let me see if I can show you an example. Amazing quality. But for example, here is the cat bingo. So you can see here's some of the cats that are included that you're going to be playing. And then it has like all this fact description about that specific cat. And every one of them has that. So what we typically do is we call the cat or the whatever out. And then I am quicker. So I'll find if I have it on my board. And then while everybody else is looking, I'll read the little fact about it in the book so that we're learning even more. So they have a cat bingo. This is our newest addition, endangered animal bingo. Ocean bingo, bug bingo, dog bingo. Bird bingo. And last but not least, monkey bingo. OK, last we have some of the smaller games that we keep in our separate containers. This game is called Into the Forest, and it has absolutely gorgeous illustrated cards. It is a nature food chain game. So it's based off of the food chain. And I'm talking all the way down to like it has cards for death and decay and plants eating insects and fungi. Like it's such a fun game. It's played in three rounds and you get this little notebook to keep score on. Next, we have one of Emily's absolute favorites, and it is called Chomp. It is another food nature. I'm sorry, food chain based game, but it's based off of the ocean. So you have all these little ocean animals. And for example, if these two throw down, this one wins because it would eat this. So it's a war game. And here you can see who chomps who. But it's just ocean animal based food chain. But you play it like war. And then again, if you have a child who loves animals and who loves potty humor, this game, Go Poop, would be hilarious for them. The Go Poop has Go Poop, pets, zoo animals, ocean animals and maybe a forest animal. I feel like there's four of them, so I might be missing one. But basically, it is played very similar to a go fish, except you have ocean animals, a picture of their poop and a fact. So, for example, well, poop is extremely earth friendly and necessary for a healthy environment. Let's see if I can find another one. When an octopus really has to go, it not only expels poop through its siphon, it also shoots out water jets for propulsion and eat clouds, too. So you can learn all kinds of interesting things about whatever animal and when they go to the potty. All right. We have talked about Quick Picks now, the different games in math and geography and history. And now this is Quick Picks Animal. Now, I've told you guys, I love it when we can learn one type of game, one way a game plays, and then I can keep playing them over different subjects because then I don't have to learn new games. So what you are laying down on the table to try to match to are these types of cards where it's like the animal classifications. And then you have the cards in your hand with all the different animals on them. And you're trying to classify them the quickest into the cards that are laying on the table. Next up, again, we talked about Top Trumps in geography and history. Top Trumps is another one. They have a ton of topics. This one happens to be bugs. You're playing a war type game based off of these categories on the card. And like I said, this one's bugs, but they have horses and sharks and deep creature, deep ocean creatures. And there's so many I can't even think of right now. But if you are doing a unit study on a topic, I always search Top Trumps, whatever we're learning about, just to see if there are any. And then along those same lines, we've talked about it before, is the Professor Noggin. Super simple. You roll a die and then you answer the questions on the back. You have easy and hard. When we start a unit study, we start with easy. We try to answer the hard by the end of them. I now own all of the available Professor Noggin decks because we love them that much. But if I were doing a unit study, I would literally search Professor Noggin, whatever unit study I was doing, because that one happened to be earth science that they have famous scientists, earth science, pets, space, human body. I mean, you name it. They probably have a Professor Noggin deck for it. And then the last one that I have is the Brain Busters. Now, sometimes you can find these at the Dollar Tree, which is great when that happens. But even if not, they're normally like five to six dollars on Amazon. It just has a picture on the front and six trivia questions on the back. No die needed. We just answer, which is great. So these can go in the car with us. They can go in my purse. That one that I just showed you happened to be ocean, but they have space. Dinosaur, bug, human body. So again, you can find one in almost any topic that you're going to be learning about in your homeschool. So that is our top favorite science games off of our game school shelves. And I would love it if you would leave down in the comments your favorite science based games that you're playing in your homeschool, because I'm always looking for more games to add to our shelves, even though they're already overflowing. I will always add good one. All right. And now here are my top five science games. I've been narrowing it down to my top five or six for almost every video so that you kind of know what we play the most in our homeschool. So here they are. I am just picking these because I can't live without them. Any of the Lawrence King bingos and any of the Lawrence King memories. We pulled these out probably almost more than anything else on our game shelf. We just love them so much. They're so beautiful and they're so enjoyable to play. Like we all love them. So that's going to be one and two. But I'm not picking those particular ones. I'm just picking memory and bingo in general camp, because again, it's one that everybody can play. Like even when my parents come over, my dad has played it with us. My mom has played it with us. It's just been nice to have something that everybody can play because that doesn't happen often. Totally gross, because, well, it's just hilarious. And then this is then one that has been pulled off the shelf a ton lately, and that's the animal trivia challenge, mainly because it is newer this year. It's animal based, which Emily absolutely loves. She's obsessed with animals. And then we've really been enjoying, like I said, that rank it category because there's a name it and know it and a rank it. And that rank it category has really been kind of new and exciting for us. And so it's one that we've been playing a lot lately.