Posts Tagged ‘Gaming’
kids at play sign
Party games, gaming, playing strategies recreation and leisure are nowadays object of increasing attention. The educational value of party games and gaming activities plays a certain role in the education and growth of the child. New studies and disciplines train teachers and educators more prepared and professional in offering party games and gaming activities to support the educational development of children.
The best party games for kids and adults can be divided into group games, outdoor and indoor games, skill games and board games. Party games and tournaments are also great occasions to improve group socialization and discussion and to establish solid team works. Read the rest of this entry »
Acropolis of Athens
Once, on the Acropolis of Athens ancient Greeks used to play board games. They used to roll the dice and play in the Parthenon, the great temple dedicated to the goddess Athena, protector of the city.
Ancient Greeks played Board games very similar to our checkers or chess, with game boards engraved on the floor.
The archaeologist Eleni Karakitsou reveals that during the work of restoration of the Parthenon were found about 50 boards carved on the stairways and the floor, but they used to be certainly more.
The famous image of Achilles and Ajax playing dice under the walls of Troy, painted on many Greek vases, prove that dices games were ancient Greeks favourite pastime .
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Greek and Roman games are one of the little known aspects of these ancient societies.
In Hellenistic and Roman culture skill games were a recreational activity both for children and adults.
Since prehistoric times is possible to recognize the so-called ancestors of games and toys among the archeological finds and in the works of Hellenic and Romans artists and poets:
We know for sure that in the fifth century BC, Crater, an Athenian playwright, wrote a play dedicated to skill games.
In ancient Rome writer Suetonius wrote two different books one on Greek kids games, and the other on the Romans ones: unfortunately all these works got lost and we know only a few certain things about ancient Greek and Roman skill games.
A lot of references are traceable in the works of philosophers, poets, playwrights who, helped us to understand that in every ancient game there was a deep educational theory to help and support kids development through the use of their skills.
In the ancient Roman world the expression “nuces relinquere” (leave the nuts), meant leaving childhood and becoming adult, because nuts were used by kids to play one of the most popular skill game in ancient Rome . The nuts were used like balls and thrown to to smash other nuts, just like in the modern bowling game.
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scrabble one of the most popular games in US
Scrabble is probably one of the most famous board games ever invented with over 100 million sets sold in all the world.
Today everyone knows Scrabble and have played this linguistic clever game once at least, but few people know the real story of its invention.
In fact not everyone knows that Scrabble before becoming a famous board game was first a commercial flop.
Year 1931; The city of Poughkeepsie, upstate New York, was facing the worst years of the great depression. This was the situation when an architect, Alfred Mosher Butts, lost his job and decided to devote himself to his biggest passion: board games and words. Soon Butts decided to invent a board game to play with words and improve the linguistic skills of the player. Towards the end of 1931 Butts had already developed the basic idea of the board game, which was initially called Lexico. This game was initially played without the board and players calculated their scores according to the length of the words formed. There were also reward points for words formed with less frequent letters (B, F, H, M, P, V, W, Y) and bonus points even higher for those containing unusual letters (J, K, Q, X, Z).
In 1933, Butts tied to register the trademark of is new board game but his request was denied. Similarly, when he proposed the new board game to the two top gaming company In United States, (Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley), he received only a polite refuse.
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green world and ecological games
Some online games creators have realized many fun and educational flash games, to support the the environmental cause.
Here you can find the green online games top list.
I think these are among the cleverest flash games available online, because help people to “go green” and face many of the critical environmental issues of our time, such as sustainable way of life, energy savings and waste reduction. Green online games also give many tips and info about global warming and environmental pollution.
Online gaming industry endorsed environmental protection creating new ecological flash games to save the planet with the best weapons available: commitment and political activism.
All the green flash games in the following online eco-games top list are free to play and share: Read the rest of this entry »
the board and the pieces of Gomoku
Gomoku (五目並べ) is a Japanese traditional logic board game, related with the game of Gobang (which uses the same board and pieces), and it’s also know in English countries as Five in a Row.
The rules of the game of Gomoku are in fact different and much simpler than the Gobang game and for this reason it’s a board game played mainly by children. But despite its simples rulres Gomoku is a strategy and logic board game more complex and difficult than Tic Tac Toe (also called Nine Mens Morris) and the modern Connect Four. Read the rest of this entry »
The Rubik’s Cube is a famous visual logic game and a really complicate puzzle invented by Hungarian sculptor and architect Ernő Rubik in 1974.
Originally called Magic Cube from its inventor, this visual logic game was renamed Rubik’s Cube and marketed by Ideal Toys in 1980 and soon became one of the best-selling game in history, with about 300 million units sold.
A lot of people went mad trying to solve the Rubik’s cube because it’s one of the hardest visual logic puzzle ever invented, and if you suffer of anger attacks this puzzle game is definitely not for you.
You may have a Nervous Breakdown!
Rubik’s cube solution involves a long and complicated logic method, but if you want a quicker way to solve it you can check this website clicking here.
You must select the colours and recreate your puzzle in the Rubik’s cube solver and the game is done in few moves. With this program solve this intricate puzzle game is really easy.
No matter how bad you’ve messed up with your cube, with this little help you will to find the way out and win.
So now you can easily impress your boss or show off with your friends…
- In: Curiosities | Educational | History | Psychology
- 1 Comment
Jacob L. Moreno
The term role-playing game has roots in the history of psychology.
In fact, The first to coin the term “Role Play” was Jacob L. Moreno in 1934, after experimenting in 1921 the “theatre of spontaneity”.
Jacob Levy Moreno was a leading psychiatrist, thinker and educator and has been recognized as one of the pioneer of group psychotherapy.
In 1930 Moreno emigrated to the United States and began to develop the technique of psychodrama which is still used in psychotherapy: in the psychodrama technique the patient has to recall and act (like he is on a stage) a past conflict he had against someone.
Then the roles are switched and the patient plays the part of his opponent to try to understand what the other person has felt in that occasion.
But this first sense of the word role-play has no relation with the role play intended as recreational activity, derived from war–games. 
The role-playing games were played for the first time in the late sixties at the University of Minnesota war-game society.
In 1971, one student Gary Gygax developed in a war-game with medieval setting called Chainmail, wich become very popular among all Minnesota undergratduates.
But was only in 1974, when Gygax and his mate Dave Arneson invented and released the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons that that role-playing games became worldwide famous.
For this reason, D & D is considered the first modern role-playing game and had a lot of influence on later role-playing games.
Germany,
This summer instead of going on holidays, a group of researchers from the University of Trier in Rhineland-Palatinate, studied the experimental introduction of chess in elementary school for the new academic year.
The results show that 6 years old children that have begun to learn how to playchess learn more easly not only math but also German grammar.
In other words researchers proved that children who play chess are doing better during all the years of the primary school.
For this reason chess are now considered as an established educational method in Germany’s primary schools.
Chess help children develop logic and represents a great workout for their brain; chess can also useful to facilitate the integration of foreign scholars (more than eight million students in Germany are immigrants or children of immigrants).
This new method of using chess to improve students’ performances in traditional disciplines like grammar and math is now used in all the primary schools of the Germany.
The biggest problems for the teachers was when children learned how to play chess and started to beat them. We must say that this a clear evidence of how the pupils can overcome their masters.
For this reason now teachers are assisted by regular chess players during the “chess hours”.
I don’t know if you live in Germany or not, the fact is that scientific evidences show that chess are a great educational game and can help children to develop not only math capabilities, but also grammar and literacy skills.
The video below shows World Chess Champion Susan Polgar playing chess vs. the young students of a German school.
- In: Educational | toys
- 1 Comment
WASHINGTON
Americans little girls learn how to be a mother too soon with the new Baby glutton, a doll that simulate the breast-feeding with sounds and mouth movements. This toy, produced by Berjuan, a spanish company, comes with a special bra for girls to make the playing mother experience as real as possible.
The doll as special sensors and cries like a real baby when he needs more milk and does the burp when it’s filled. In USA the baby glutton it’s object of controversy: in fact, a lot of parents organization deeply believe that this doll may push the girls to become mothers too soon increasing the risks of teenage pregnancy.
“breastfeeding is a natural process” object Berjuan’s marketing experts and the idea behind the doll is to promote it by showing little girls how to do it. But many parents are concerned that the baby glutton could be a bad toy for their young girls and not an educational game to teach children motherhood skills.
Honestly I don’t think that girls need to use a doll to know breastfeeding at this very young age, there’s time for that; it’s true that breastfeeding is a natural process, but it’s also true that this is a natural process of an adult woman that not belongs to childhood and puberty and shouldn’t belong to teenage like many concerned parents suggested.
Games for your mind 
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