As we speech therapists are preparing for the beginning of the school year, I know we are all lining up some new therapy materials so I wanted to share a great new game that requires lots of fast thinking and language processing.
Designed for 8 years and up, Morphology Junior is like Pictionary, only with objects, not drawings. Kids are divided into teams and team members take turns being the “Morphologist” who depicts the word using string, rubber rings, wooden shapes, glass drops and cubes. The game gets interesting when players are guessing a word that is close but not accurate and the Morphologist has to think of attributes or details that will clearly differentiate his word from the wrong answer. I thought I had made a fine airplane, until players were shouting out “bird” so I had to make a slow take-off and hold the wings still for them to see that it was a plane. You can modify this game and have partners be the Morphologist together so they can brainstorm the details pertaining to the person, thing or action that would best depict it–adding to the language lesson. Here is my full review:
I love games that parents and kids can play together with challenges scaled for the whole family to participate! Morphology Junior was just released so even an 8 year-old can be the Morphologist, providing clues to guess a word. Creativity and language learning abound as players pick a word card, give the clue–which is associated with the target word, usually its category–and proceed to “create” the word with 30 available props. Colored cubes, wooden shapes, string, rubber rings and glass drops transformed into a band-aid, bunk bed or a yawn. Our testers had to continually modify their structure to add features of the concept they were trying to convey. A wooden figure with two rectangular blocks was thought to be a bird until the Morphologist did a slow and steady take-off for an airplane. Listeners were stuck on “dump truck” until the Morphologist used more props to symbolize garbage and his team yelled, “Garbage truck.” With the option to use easy and hard words to guess, players of all ages can enjoy the game together. More abstract concepts like “wind,” “yell,” and “roots” required ingenuity as the string represented the roots of a tree topped with green blocks for foliage. The kid-friendly game board is a series of lily pads, as your frog marker advances and follows the directions for various challenges including limiting the number of props available, adding sound effects (really helpful for the wind!) or becoming one of the props yourself. Morphology Junior is loaded with learning fun as kids represent a word with a series of objects, requiring them to know the essential features of the object, action or person and then guessers have to re-convert the concepts presented back to a word. Quick thinking and language processing help players identify critical differences to distinguish their word from the wrong one being guessed. What do I have to portray to show a garbage truck and not a dump truck? Morphology Junior is perfect for a family game night of fun, learning and laughs.
Available at Morphology Games
