The cheerful Super Silly Science Game is ideal for cash-strapped classrooms. For a start, teachers can get it free. It’s also fun. So much fun that students playing it may not realise they’re refreshing their knowledge and skills at the same time.
This is a competitive board game in which learning science is interwoven with learning English and public speaking (each player is meant to read out his or her challenge), spiced with a strong sense of the ridiculous and tinged with a touch of high drama.
You may be asked how the human eye works. Or you may be told to lie on a floor and pretend to be a smelly old shoe. (Any shoe will do, says the designer, Ginny Stone of iThemba nuclear research laboratories.)
A card may ask what a herpetologist does for a living. (Don’t worry, there’s a cheat sheet with answers when you get stuck.) Oopsie cards may move you backwards because “the dog ate your homework” or “you cheeked the teacher”…while warning “and no moaning!”. Lucky cards politely ask you to moo like a cow, howl like a wolf or pretend you’re a tree in high winds and wave your branches.
The brightly coloured laminated board game, cards, dice and highly polished rocks for each of the six players was test-run by schools at the annual national science festival, Sasol SciFest, in Grahamstown earlier this year and received positive feedback.
Although Super Silly Science is meant for primary school students, my teenaged daughter was happy to play it with her younger siblings and guests. Some of the Dinaledi maths and science schools have found that it works best for grades seven and eight. So it seems suitable for a variety of ages and abilities.
And now I have to go. My red card says my experimental egg is about to hatch. I have to make a loud cock-a-doodle-doo noise to welcome the chick.