Science Games to Teach Environmental Awareness

When you think science games, it is often physics games that come to mind. After all, any game that is built with a physics engine serves as a great physics game. They’re fun to play, and they help students understand concepts such as acceleration and conservation of energy. Angry Birds and Portal are great examples of fun games that are used to teach physics to students.

However, science games are about a lot more than physics. There are great science games that teach nearly every science topic, from how the body fights cancer to how pollution forms in the environment. That’s right, you can teach your child to look after nature without even sending them outdoors. Here are three great science games to teach environmental awareness to kids.

“sim city 4 Zoning and Roads” by haljackey is licensed under CC BY 2.0

1. SimCity EDU: Pollution Challenge

In this game, kids take on the role of a mayor along with all the city-planning and decision-making that comes with the position. The focus is on keeping pollution levels to a minimum while also ensuring that all other aspects of city life function smoothly. While SimCity may not be a science game, kids who play it come to realize how various factors contribute to the pollution level of a city. They understand how pollution-control measures can be put to effect in a practical way to reduce negative impact on the population. This game is a great way to take environmental issues out of textbooks and show kids how they affect everyday life. Playing this game is likely to make kids more conscious about how simple decisions can make a difference to the health of the environment.

2. Citizen Science

This science game was conceptualized by Kurt Squire when he realized that there were lakes in downtown Madison that people couldn’t swim in. In Citizen Science, players try to find out why the local lake is so polluted by traveling through time and collecting evidence. They meet various characters responsible for the pollution of the lake and build strong arguments to convince them to change their behaviour. They use various scientific tools to conduct research about the pollution in the lake, and learn a great deal about lake ecosystems. They also understand the long-term effects of pollution on the environment. Eventually players must change the course of history and prevent the lake from becoming as polluted as it was before the quest.

3. Web Earth Online

This is a great science game that lets kids understand what life is like for animals living in the wild. Players choose what animal they would like to play as, and then go about their life trying to survive in the natural environment. They must deal with natural climatic conditions as well as the threat posed by predators. Web Earth Online is a multiplayer game – players interact with each other as friends or foes depending on which species they belong to. Players are sensitized to the struggles faced by animals and are likely to be more thoughtful towards animals in real life after playing this game.

Mathematician of the Month – Babbage

To the humble PC that is displaying this text as I type it, Charles Babbage is its father. A British mathematician and engineer, Charles ‘Father of Computers’ Babbage was very picky about his Math. In fact, he even wrote to Lord Tennyson (apparently some sort of famous poet) and asked him to correct the lines of his poem ‘Every minute dies a man, Every minute one is born’ to ‘Every minute one and a sixth is born’. Of course, he was refused.

Having come into a lot of riches courtesy his dad, he spent all his money inventing rather exciting gadgets including the speedometer and the cowcatcher, which kept cows with wander lust off the railway track. Indubitably, his greatest invention was the calculator. The first one he ever invented was called the ‘Difference Engine’.

The British Government, sold on the idea of this Difference Engine, gave him £1 million so he could build it. After 11 years of trying and trying, Babbage gave it up for a better idea. Furious that their money was wasted, the government refused to give him any more. Not to be deterred, he continued on as before because, well, he was rich!

The Difference Engine version 2.0 was going to be bigger and better. It could do more than just add and subtract. It would be able to do multiplication, division and also printing. Babbage envisioned that the new machine would use similar technology to that of carpet making looms. Unfortunately, he died before the machine could be built.

In 1890, an American guy by the name of Herman used Babbage’s ideas to build a much simpler machine. If his name sounds familiar, it is because he went on to found International Business machines aka IBM. However, it wasn’t till 1944 that the machine of Babbage’s dream was built. The first calculate needed 10sqms to house it and it weighed 30 tons! The Science Museum in London built a model of the original Difference Engine in 1992. That one was only 2 meters high and over 3 meters long. Can you imagine what owing a computer those days would look like? Yikes!

Sound of Language

Teaching phonetics and the right pronunciation is important in English language classes because English is a non-phonetic language. Words are not written the way they sound. Pronunciation also differs based on whether the words are nouns, verbs or adjectives. Think ‘photographer’, ‘photography’ and ‘photographic’ where the stress on syllables varies. Learning to pronounce words correctly and understanding the different ways in which words are pronounced can help kids communicate better. While children practice phonemes in an early age, it need not stop at that.

You can teach your child pronunciation with English games and various other methods. Here are a couple of ways that will help children learn this aspect of the language.

Phonetic Symbols

Create a board with your child with different phonetic symbols that are commonly used in dictionaries. These symbols represent the various sounds. Knowing these symbols will make it easy for kids when they are learning vocabulary and will help them to simultaneously pick up the right way to pronounce these new words. You can also refer to the International Phonetic Association Symbols.

“dictionary focus” by Chris Dlugosz is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Television

This is an old classic when it comes to teaching the correct pronunciation. Kids can learn standard pronunciation followed by any country by following the local news channel. These are free from local dialect and will train children to pick up different sounds and intonation.

Movies

Movies are a great way to train children in listening to different accents and understanding them easily. To make it more interesting, ask children to try and emulate the accents so that they become more aware of how the way they shape words changes. They can also try delivering the same dialogue using different emotions to see how it affects the way words are sounded.

“Mime Artist” by Paul Hudson is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Tongue Twisters

Remember the scene from My Fair Lady where Professor Higgins works on improving Eliza Doolittle’s pronunciation with tongue twisters? Tongue twisters are an effective way to improve pronunciation and fluency. Kids enjoy tongue twisters and you can ask them to start slow by paying attention to the way each word is pronounced and once they get that right, they can increase the speed.

Here are a few tongue twisters that you can try –

“She sells seashells by the seashore.”

“The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.”

“My Fair Lady poster, 1964” by Laura Loveday is licensed under CC BY 2.0

“Betty Botter bought some butter but she said this butter’s bitter. If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter. But a bit of better butter will surely make my batter b etter. So she bought a bit of butter better than her bitter butter and she put it in her batter and her batter was not bitter. So t’was better Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter.”

Apart from these, you can include exercises where kids have to read along with a recorded tape and try to match it as best as they can. You could silently say a word and looking at the shape of your mouth, kids have to figure out the word. These exercises will help your child become more comfortable with the sounds of the English language.