I picked this game out for myself for Christmas. The amazon rating is 4/5 stars. So I had high hopes for it. We played it once in our family Christmas game marathon. I played with my 26 year old son, 15 year old son, 13 year old daughter, and 10 year old son on the Sunday ‘tween Christmas and New Year’s. (I made it more Sabbath-oriented by reading facts about the different countries we “visited” by researching the presence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the various countries.)

I have to admit, it didn’t seem as exciting as I had hoped. Then I brought it out again on last Wednesday, for our geography/history gameschooling time. So then I played it with a 15 year old boy, 14 year old boy, 13 year old girl, 12 year old girl, and two 10 year olds, a boy and a girl. This go-around it was a lot more fun! I’m still pondering on what made the difference.

Basically in this game you pretend you are flying around the world, visiting different cities to collect passport stamps. You earn the stamps by answering correctly questions about geography, culture, languages, etc. across the world.  Sometimes you read aloud Culture Cards that are just FYI, and don’t garner points because they aren’t questions. First person to fill up his or her passport wins. Along the way you increase your “C.Q.” or Cultural Quotient, by learning interesting factoids. Like, did you know that using the pointer finger to beckon someone towards you is rude in Japan? They use a different gesture. And that in the Bahamas, the people have an “in-the-present” culture that allows one to leave a job early, no matter if that means a bus driver abandons driving his bus route? Playing this game will definitely help you increase your C.Q. so you aren’t a rude tourist.

For our picture book of the day we read half of the book above. We will read the next half next Wednesday on our next Geography/ History day. It takes you through the lives of seven children across the world on an average day. You learn common names, different words, the name of the alphabet of the language the child uses, typical foods, and typical activities. Very fun and interesting!

Then we played “Two Truths and a Lie about Geography/History.” I pull out my Usborne Geo and History books and many other books of that type I’ve collected over the years, like Story of the World and my picture atlases and history picture books. My learners then pore through the books, picking out three statements. They write the three statements down in their notebooks and turn one into a lie. We take turns reading them out aloud and voting for the lie. Sometimes we keep track of points, sometimes we don’t. It’s all fun and we learn at the same time. I love that this game is super easy and adaptable to their interests. It’s always fun to see what the kids pick out to say. My ten year old boy loves to use NFL history. I focused on Thomas Jefferson, using a picture book about him. You can also use this game for science, art, really any subject. If you don’t have a ton of books about the subject get them from the library. Usborne books are great because they are so beautifully illustrated with tons of pictures that completely draw the child in.

These are some of the books that are great for such a game as I just described:

Plus any picture book biographies.

We will be playing this a lot more. It’s a great game to have in your back pocket because you can have it be as long or as short as you want it to be, and you can keep score or not, according to the competitiveness of your kiddos.