Rollercoaster Builder
A genuinely fun and quite addictive game. It makes kids think (a lost art in today’s schools) logically to solve a seemingly simple problem – get your coaster from one side to the other and collect a preset number of coins.
Serves as a great introduction or review activity on basic physics, concepts like force, motion, work, etc. The game itself may not inherently teaching these things, but a good teacher can find a way to help students make the connection.
Touch Physics
Love this app! Spent an entire weekend playing it when I first found it (sad, I know). Would be great to tie in with the laws of motion or simple machines.
A great extension activity could have students designing their own level and illustrating how they would go about solving it by using the various types of simple machines they have learned about (levers, inclined and declined planes, etc)
Paper Bridge
Students dont seem to like this one as much as I do, which generally means it requires them to think too much. This is a virtual way to do that age old activity we all did back in school – building bridges to support weight.
Many levels with many unique challenges.. students truly become bridge engineers.
Lemonade Stand
Another classic game that can easily be used in Social Studies. Great way to introduce seemingly difficult concepts like capitalism, scarcity of resources, supply and demand. A great app for a teacher who can make it into a learning experience.
Map Wiz
It gives you a location (city and country), you drop a pin as close to it as you can. I love that the game first wants you to double click on the continent to zoom in. Great way for kids to learn/review their continents early on.
If you don’t teach, you may not realize the number of kids that think Africa is a country and China is a continent… Our kids need to geography reviews, no matter how simple it is!
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GeoMania
Very similar to Map Wiz in its function — just looks a little more Google Earth(ish)
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Geomaster Plus
Awesome app! Let’s you piece together a continent one country at a time as it times you in the process. I love that the game doesnt end until you do the WHOLE continent, really forces students to pay attention to where countries are because they are going to keep being asked to locate a specific country until they get it right.
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iTrade – Stock Market Simulator
Fun and free! Each month starts a new game. It’s a great stock market simulator that trades up the minute. Not all stocks are available, but there are more than enough to make it an interesting challenge in any classroom. Play along with them, challenge them to beat you!
