Scribblenauts

I never thought I'd say that I love a Nintendo DS game. Well, I've changed my tune. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that this little game is educational. The game is Scribblenauts. In the game you play as a character named Max. He needs to collect these little stars called starites. There are different levels in the game and the starites are placed in progressively more difficult locations. In order to get the starite you need help. Here's where the educational component comes in. To get help you have to write or type in the word of the item you want to create. For instance, if the starite is in a tree, you can type in ladder and a ladder will appear. You use the ladder to get up the tree. 


This was an easy example. Another example requires you to face a tornado or angry bees, a deadly piranha or a situation that calls for some decent imagination and problem solving. Of course knowing how to spell is essential as well. I don't ever play video games. I don't like them. I'm hooked on this one. The funniest part of this is that I am not nearly as creative as my children. For instance, I just couldn't figure out how to get rid of the piranha. I tried shooting him with a gun, I tried wearing armor, I tried using a fishing rod (he even kills you on land). I just couldn't think of what to do. I presented the problem to the kids and they fairly quickly told me to get a shark to eat him. It worked!


The reason I purchased this game was multi-faceted. I thought it would be good for spelling practice and for problem solving. I figured it could be a fun addition to our school day in small doses. In addition, it has already helped Nathan to feel successful. In fact, he was pretty proud today when he did some great problem solving that I NEVER would have come up with (he needed to get into a small space so he created a shrink ray, a man and a rock. He had to get the man to shoot him with the shrink ray so he threw the rock at him to get the man mad!). He said he was pretty proud to be smarter than his mom!