The Dietz Foundation

Better to tweak the rules and emphasize the creation of things and the riddles. Be prepared to provide extra play-doh or model clay!

It looks pretty and will have some critical thinking issues: do you press on with exporation or go back and claim your fame and hope no one else finds other, more famous things. Similar to “Source of the Nile” by Avalon Hill.

It is essentially a 4-player chess variant.

Players look at cards and try and form words from the letters on at least three cards. First to blurt a word gets those cards. Simple, fast, affordable.

Nice easy word game. The caution would be with older kids who could try and push the limits of word choices, but that is a rare problem. It is also easy to make your own cards for the game.

These are books covering every conceivable military campaign of history or army of history. The value comes from the brevity of the books, the conciseness of detail, and the photographs and color artwork that accompany the text. The research behind the books tends to be first-rate as well. If not used directly or made available to students, they can supplement knowledge in areas you feel you as a teacher need help with.

Great game, relationship between resources and communities, also involves probability/odds in determination of resources. Instead of Catan, could easily call the game Settlers of Jamestown for a US History class for example.

The computer game plays MUCH faster taking all calculations out. It would be the MUCH PREFERRED version for use in a classroom. Players buy stock in railroads and manipulate the market while developing a rail network in the Eastern United States. Completely different in style from the Empire Builder series. It is massive profits through stock manipulation, just like in 19th century America. The computer version can be saved and resumed. Boardgame version would require scrupulous students/students who stay focused when not actively participating in a turn.

Once one is learned, the whole series is known. Players get to draw with crayons and build rails to develop railways. They then have to move trains to carry cargos to destination cities, showing where resources are and forcing players to find cities. The most useful in the series are Empire Builder (USA), Eurorails (Europe), British Rails (Great Britain), and Nippon Rails (Japan).

Players are time travelers trying to create a certain timeline in Earth’s history. Players can end the world, create peace, etc. Photocopying for personal use would be necessary to have more than two players playing, or else modifying the rules.