Brain Quest

Grade 3-4
Workman Publishing

The delightful thing about children is that they are constantly learning; and they are constantly playing. Play is fairly often just mirroring the world around, learning about it by modeling it, play acting the roles and situations that will come to define their personalities as they age. This deck asks, "If children get a social education through play, why not a book education, too?" And that is what this series is. It's not flash cards, since you don't memorize; but it's more like Trivial Pursuit, in that you learn by being tested, and hearing the answers you get wrong.

Brain Quest comes in several age brackets (which you can see by going to Workman Publishing's web page), with subject matter and difficulty tuned appropriately. But don't let the categorization become a limitation. If your child finds 3-4 too easy, move them up to 5-6. The point is to keep it fun. If it becomes work, they won't do it.

The game is played with two stacks of cards - one, the playing cards, is the deck of questions. The other is the deck of instructions. Each player starts witha number of cards in their hands, and one by one they draw an instruction card, and do what it says. The object of the game is to lose all your cards, and so correct answers are rewarded by allowing you to discard cards, and incorrect answers require you to draw more. And everyone gets to hear each question as it comes, so everyone gets to learn. The instruction cards occasionally call for teamwork, as well, fostering cooperation.

The Brain Quest series actually spans much more than their playing card sets, but these make a nice part of the whole series. As long as your child is always learning, you may as well put some effort into helping them choose what to learn.

All images and quoted text © 1996 Workman Publishing, presented here solely for analysis and appreciation.