Game Ideas from Donna Grogan, DC Geographic Alliance

Game Ideas from Donna Grogan, DC Geographic Alliance

This lesson of multidisciplinary activities and games will encourage students to problem solve, acquire, process and report information about the continent of Asia while having fun and without realizing they are actually learning.

Name That Country

This activity challenges teams of students to locate as many countries on an outline map of the continent of Asia as they can without the use of a map of Asia with labels. Students are divided into 2 or 3 teams of two. Using different colored post-its one student from each team will write the name of the country pulled from a deck of country cards on the post-it and compete with the other teams to be first to place the labeled post-it on what they think is the correct country. Then, another country is pulled from the deck and play continues with another student from each team. The teams play for 5 minutes before their work is checked to see which team had the most post-it labels on the correct countries.

Jeopardy

This game challenges students to respond to statements in five categoriesrelated totheir knowledge of the continent of Asia. The categories are natural features, countries, religion, cities and bodies of water. The statement values are from 100 to 500. There are 3 sets of two players. However, the number of players can be modified as needed. The pair of players seated in the middle go first by choosing a category and statement value. The host reads the statement. Any team can respond. The response must be in the form of a question. The first team to respond correctly wins the points. Points are subtracted for incorrect responses. The host keeps the score. The first team to reach 1000 points wins the game.

Take a “Stan”

Thereare seven countries in the world that end in “stan” and each is located on the continent of Asia. The suffix “stan” is derived from a Persian word that means “land”. The seven countries in alphabetical order are Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

This activity is designed to familiarize the student with, not only, the physical landscape of each country, but also, the history and culture of the people living in these seven countries. In order to play the game you will need name signs for each of the 7 countries; fact cards for each shuffled together; a chair for each participant; and twenty-five 10 point cards for scoring. The host reads a clue from a fact card. Participants “stand up” and grab the sign for the country that he or she thinks is the answer to the clue given. Each correct answer is worth 10 points and 10 points are deducted for each incorrect answer. A winner is declared when someone earns 100 points.

Three-In-A-Row Game of Asia

Nerenchi is an ancient three-in-a-row game played in the Asian country of Sri Lanka. Children all over the world play three-in-a-row games for two players. Tic-tac-toe is an example of such a game. The object of the game is to get three markers in a row on some sort of diagram that is used as the game board. In “nerenchi” the row can be made along the side of a square, along a line joining the midpoints of the sides of the squares, or along the diagonal line joining the corners. These are games of strategy. “Placing”: Players take turns placing one counter at a time on an empty point on the board. This part of the game ends when 22 counters are on the board, leaving 2 empty points. Making “nerenchi” during this stage earns a player an extra turn. “Moving”: The last player to place a counter on the board moves first. The players take turns moving one counter at a time along a line to the next point. You may not move along the diagonal lines or jump over counters. Making a nerenchi during the moving stage allows a player to remove one of the opponent’s counters from the board. Loser: The player that has lost all but two counters or is blocked from moving loses the game.

Board Game of Transfer

Sungka(Soon-KAH) from the Philippines is a mankala-type game. Similar games are called Chonka in Malaysia and Congklak in Indonesia. The word mankala is Arabic for “transferring”. In Sungka stones or seeds are transferred from one cup to another on a board having two rows of five cups and two endpots. Rules: all moves are clockwise; players may make several laps in one move; players drop a counter in their own endpot as they go around the board; and each player’s endpot is to his or her left. To play the game you must distribute the fifty counters, 5 in a cup. The five cups on each side belong to the player nearest them. Move: Players take turns picking up the counters from any of their cups and “sowing” them one by one into the cups going to the left around the board.

Players drop one counter into their endpot as they go around the board but not into the opponent’s endpot. If the last counter drops into a cup that already has counters the player picks up all the counters in that cup and continues to sow. If the last counter falls into an empty cup on the opponent’s side or into their own storage cup it is the opponent’s turn to move. Capture: If the last counter falls into an empty cup on the player’s side of the board and the cup opposite it has counters, the player may capture those counters and place them in his endpot. Now it’s the opponent’s turn. Winner: If there are no counters left on a player’s side, the opponent adds the counters on his or her side to those in the endpot. The player with the most counters in the endpot wins the game. So, you can see it is not always best to go out of the game first.

Blocking Board Games

Pong Hau K’I (Pong-haw-kee) is a game from China. In Korea the game is called Ou-moul-ko-no or Kono. Two people play on the five points where the lines intersect. One player places counters on the two lower points and the other player’s counters are placed on the two upper points. The first player moves one of his counters to the center point. Then player two moves a counter to an empty space. The players continue taking turns moving a counter. The game ends when one player wins by blocking the other player from moving. The game is declared a draw, if the same set of moves is repeated three times.

Kaooafrom India is also called Vultures and Crows. The goal is forthe vultures to capture the crows by jumping over them, or for the crows to corner the vulture so it cannot move. To play this game you will need 1 counter for the vulture and 7 counters for the crows. “Placing”: Player one placesone crow on any point and player two places the vulture on an empty point. Player one places the second crow on any empty point and player two moves the vulture one space along a line to an empty point. Placing continues until all 7 crows are on the board. Then the players take turns moving one counter at a time. Capture: The vulture can jump over a crow to an empty point and capture it. Finish: When the vulture is trapped and cannot move or when the vulture has captured at least four crows.