This game is essentially a 'point and click' story adventure. The difference being its frequent and clever use of puzzles to progress through the game. These puzzles range from visual tricks to logical thought processes to word poblems.
The obvious use of the game in school is that of interest in, and a want to solve and explore the puzzles. I believe the best way to use the puzzles (and something I plan on doing) is using them as daily puzzles to be solved at the beginning of the school day on the board. I spent a long time on a recent practice, searching for fun and stimulating problems to be solved in the morning for a yr 5 class - this game would have helped me a lot.
Another aspect, something I think may come into effect in the near future, is the use of video games as narratives to derive writing tasks. This games story (although would be too challenging for yr3 and below) could be an interesting and unconventional way of introducing a story to set up a task (using characters to make own story, what happens next in the story etc).
All in all an enjoyable and mentally stimulating game. Not one to spend a whole lesson playing, but definately has potential in the classroom!
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I loved the curoius village game, and agree with you about giving the children mental stimulation that is fun to start the day much like we have wake and shake to physically stimulate them.
ReplyDeleteWhilst on T.P with yr 3/4 we had a weekly maths lesson that was "puzzles" and it really challenged the children. The puzzle of the week wasn't leveled because it was more to do with logic and most of the time it wasn't the smartest children in the class that got the answer first (a great esteem boost!)
As for your idea about using the wii to introduce a character (from another school) I'm looking in depth in puppetry, in particular in ks2 for much the same thing!