Blue Orange Games makes some really fantastic games – think Spot It! I love using games in therapy and was thrilled when they asked if I could check out one of their newest games – Dr. Eureka. I was lucky to get it for the end of the school year, right when my kiddos were fading and fading fast! It was a mega hit and I can’t wait to tell you more about it today.
To play, you start out with 3 test tubes with 2 “molecules” in each (2 green, 2 red, 2 purple) and pick a card. The card has a design that you need to make using your molecules/tubes. The catch: you can’t touch the molecules with your hands or take them out of the tubes. You have carefully plan how to do it and use the tubes to transfer the molecules around!
Moving the molecules between tubes is really tricky and takes a lot of motor planning/fine motor skills, something many of my kiddos are lacking.
The picture above shows what a completed game looks like! All of the players (up to 4 at a time) race at the same time to get their design.
So how do I use it in speech therapy? The wonderful thing about this game is each round doesn’t take very long. That’s perfect for between rounds of drill. I’ve used it during my “rapid centers” before (where my students rapidly move around the room between centers). I’ve also used it for following directions. I hold the card and verbally tell directions on how to create the same pattern and vis versa! It’s really tricky and uses tons of concepts (on top of, in the middle, under). You can provide 1-4 step directions easily and in an age appropriate game!
The one way that I’ve used this game the most, and didn’t mean to was for social skills group. I intended to have each student ask a conversational question and take a couple turns before each round of the game. Instead, my students got frustrated with the game. So many of my students with social skill difficulties also have fine motor difficulties so this game was HARD. That means, instead of working on conversation, we worked on size of the problem and handling frustration. I paired the game with my size of the problem packet…
and the Unstuck and On Target curriculum (more on this later). See the link to this curriculum below.
We discussed how to alter the rules to make the game more fair, what to do when we were frustrated (e.g., take a break, ask to play on teams, ask to play a different game) and how to best advocate for our needs! It.was.awesome.
Hope that’s helpful for you! If you want to check out the game, click the link below! My kids just thought it was the coolest game and it turned into a really fantastic addition to my speech room.
{thanks for reading}
**A copy of this game was sent to me for free in exchange for my honest review.
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