One of my earliest and happiest school memories was playing “Arthur’s Camping Adventure” on one of three computers in the back corner of my grade one classroom. This point and click reading adventure was offered to students who had completed their work for the day AND their homework – and let’s just say, for the chance to play some Arthur? – I was VERY productive.
Here’s a link I found to a downloadable version of Arthur’s Camping Adventure. Use at your own risk.
Now I won’t say this game taught me how to read, but the independence that reading gave me to have fun playing games like this was such a motivation to continue practicing. Gamification has been with me since day one, and Arthur is not the only game I spent hours on in m childhood. I remember vividly playing games like Pajama Sam, Freddie the Fish, and Putt-Putt, and looking back on it I can’t believe how hard I was tricked into learning how to read and problem solve -and what a time it was!
I don’t even know what a six year old Soleil would have done with educational Minecraft, but I can say with confidence that it would have blown her mind. I’m so excited to see the games that I’ll be able to introduce to my future students, or maybe I’ll just get some old CDs of the classics. Arthur for the next generation.
I spent the majority of the day today playing with Scratch Coding – which I remember being way more simple when I was a child – but the feeling of success that you get when your code runs as you thought still holds up. I wish we would have had more time to explore more games but I’m excited to debrief with my peers about some of the games they discovered so I can add even more to my toolkit.
Here’s a link to Scratch – Happy Coding! See you next time!
