Anomia means inability to recover a word, which we all battled as we got into play, but there is lots of depth and language learning to this game of naming in categories. Players take turns drawing cards from two piles (each card has a symbol and some text) until there is a match of symbols which sparks a Face-off between 2 players who race to name a person, place or thing in your opponent’s card’s category before she does the same to you. We had our first Face-off with “playground game” and “vacation spot” My younger friend named a game I had never heard of before I could blurt out “Disneyland.” Categories range from easy to harder as “goddess” and “Crustacean” faced off and “Federal Holiday” and “Comic Book.” The variety of categories evened the playing field with Asian City, Cough Drop Brand, Halloween Costume , Elvis Song or Potato Chip Flavor! Tapping language skills of association, categories and naming, Anomia also builds vocabulary within a category as players learn from one another, “What’s a primate?” asked one of my younger players. 6 decks of cards provide so many varied and thoughtful categories for word-finding and vocabulary expansion. Teachers were interested in this game too, for obvious reasons, always looking for ways to make learning fun!
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