Video games are often heavily debated in parenting, homeschooling, and other educational circles, most notably for their vulgar and violent tendencies. However, there are numerous games targeted towards kids that can be very fun and educational, especially on the Wii Console. There are also many ways to make sure your child’s video game experience is safe and secure. Get started by downloading this resource, A Parent’s Guide to Video Games, Parental Controls, and Online Safety. It can help you choose age appropriate games, understand ESRB video game rating systems, set up parental controls, and structure family discussions on gaming and safety.
Video games can actually be a very exciting educational resource. Some video games are even targeted specifically to certain subject areas and can be linked to specific common core standards, by grade level. Check out these 3 fun and motivating math video games that will allow you to ease your child’s math anxieties, engage your struggling learner, or spice up your math lessons.
Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree
$19.99 on average, online or in retail stores
5 categories of activities, brain-teasers and tests are included in this hilarious and educational video game:
Compute activities which include math-themed questions
Think activities that include logic-themed questions
Analyze activities including reason-based questions
Identify activities focused on visual-themed questions
Memorize activities with memory-based questions
Your children can show off their smarts in solo, multiplayer versus, and co-op play modes. The game is completely adaptive, which means that the better your kids get at each activity, the harder they become.
Carmen Sandiego Adventures in Math: The Lady Liberty Larceny
600 Wii points, $6 from Wii Virtual Console
Carmen Sandiego is back in this video game developed by the Learning Company and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt! Your children can travel the world with Carmen, learn about geography, solve math puzzles and fight crime. Students can also challenge friends to math duels against the clock. The game is aligned to grade 4 and 5 Common Core Standards in math topics including geometry, fractions, and others.
Donkey Kong Jr Math
500 Wii points, $5 from Wii Virtual Console
Your youngsters can practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division skills and build their fluency with mathematical operations in this Donkey Kong classic developed by Nintendo. Children can even compete with siblings and friends in a race to solve problems. Critical thinking and problem solving skills are also highly incorporated in this cute and simple math game.
Free educational games can also be found on the Wii Console. Simply navigate to the internet and load up games from websites like Smart Tutor or Academic Skill Builders.
Interested in learning more about what video games have to do with math, learning and literacy? Check out What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy or Good Video Games and Good Learning, both by James Paul Gee.
What do you think? Can video games be good instructional tools? What are some of your favorite educational video games?