All about dinosaurs, fossils and prehistoric animals by Everything Dinosaur team members.
28 07, 2015

Speed Stacking Dinosaur Themed Memory Game

By | July 28th, 2015|General Teaching, Key Stage 1/2, Key Stage 3/4|Comments Off on Speed Stacking Dinosaur Themed Memory Game

Dinosaurs Inspire a Simple and Fun Memory Game

Dinosaurs and prehistoric animals can be wonderful subjects for a term topic or as part of a week of science teaching in schools.  Here is a simple and fun memory game which uses classroom resources to help reinforce learning and recall.

As Everything Dinosaur team members visit schools to carry out dinosaur themed workshops and other activities, we discuss the learning needs of children with teachers and members of the senior leadership team.  As a result, we have devised a fun, dinosaur themed speed stacking game in which children are challenged to sort different dinosaurs by size.

Dinosaur Memory Game

A Fun and Simple Dinosaur Themed Speed Stacking Game

Speed stacking game.

Simple memory game to help young scientists.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Resources Required (You Will Need)

  • Plastic cups or beakers
  • Speed stacking labels (Everything Dinosaur provides various sets of labels on the download section of this website – dinosaurs for schools)
  • Adhesive tape to secure the labels to the bottom of the beakers/cups
  • A timer such as a stop watch or Ipad/Smart phone etc.

Our team members have created a series of speed stacking challenges.  For example, to help in teaching about food webs we have a five stage, food chain based on meat-eating dinosaurs.  This is a great way to help build up hand to eye co-ordination and motor skills as well as helping children to remember how food chains are constructed.

Also, Everything Dinosaur team members have created labels for a dinosaur sizing, speed stacking game, as mentioned earlier.  Will the children be able to sort the dinosaurs by size?

Speed Stacking Game Labels Devised By Everything Dinosaur

speed stacking game labels.

Learn how animals are classified, learn the geological timescale with this speed stacking game.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Speed Stacking Labels

The speed stacking labels, further instructions and additional, free to download teaching resources from Everything Dinosaur can be provided: Contact Everything Dinosaur.

For teaching resources aimed at different year groups and key stages, simply visit the specific download pages accessible from the main downloads menu.

Once labels have been stuck onto the beakers you are ready to start the speed stacking game.  Record the times taken for the children to stack the beakers in the correct order, as extension activities you could get the children to tabulate or plot their results.  Can they devise their own dinosaur themed speed stacking games?

For dinosaur themed teaching resources including models, sets of plastic dinosaurs which are great for counting and sorting games, as well as real fossils and fossil replicas ideal for craft activities visit: Dinosaur Gifts and Toys including Replica Fossils.

28 07, 2015

Dinosaur and Science Speed Stacking Memory Game (Key Stages 3 and 4)

By | July 28th, 2015|Educational Activities, Geology, Teaching|0 Comments

Speed Stacking Memory Game – Science Learning (Key Stages 3 and 4)

With a greater emphasis on factual recall enshrined within the new national curriculum here’s a simple idea to help young scientists remember terms and sequences as part of their science studies.  Create a fun speed stacking memory game that will help pupils to memorise key points and key items of information.  This idea can be modified to fit all sorts of teaching objectives and best of all, it gives teachers and home educationalists a wonderful opportunity to introduce how data can be plotted and shown visually.

Dinosaurs and Science

Dinosaurs and Science Speed Stacking Game

Simple memory game to help young scientists.

Simple memory game to help young scientists.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Resources

  • Plastic cups (raid the water cooler)!
  • Sheet of labels (Everything Dinosaur supplies various sets of labels – size of dinosaurs, sorting out geological periods and for older students, Linnaean hierarchy labels on the “dinosaurs for schools” website).
  • Sticky tape to secure labels to the bottom of the plastic cups.
  • A stop watch or other timing device (Ipad, Smart phone and so forth).

To access downloadable prehistoric animal and dinosaur themed resources: Contact Everything Dinosaur.

Let’s imagine that you have to explain about deep time and the geological periods as part of the teaching involved at Key Stage Three (genetics and evolution).  To help reinforce learning, challenge the students to create a stack of plastic cups in the correct geological order, mapping out the fossil record of visible life.  Just stick labels to the bottom of the cups – Cambrian, Cretaceous, Jurassic and so forth and once having explained about geological time challenge the class to stack the cups in the correct order in the fastest possible time.

As an extension you can plot the results and the class to work out the best way to make a visual representation of the data – bar charts, line graphs perhaps?

Handy Labels for the Speed Stacking Game?

speed stacking game labels.

Learn how animals are classified, learn the geological timescale with this speed stacking game.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Working with Key Stages 3 and 4

Perhaps, you are working with Key Stage 4 and you are covering how changes in biology have led to a better understanding of the process of evolution.  You want to explain how life is classified and introduce Linnaean classification, from a Domain down to a Species a simple stacking game can help to reinforce learning and to introduce a fun element into the lesson plan.  Record how long it takes each student to stack the cups in the correct sequence.  As an extension, can the class calculate the mean, mode and median stacking times?

Getting to Grips with Scientific Classification

Just add the labels to the plastic cups to make a fun memory game.

Just add the labels to the plastic cups to make a fun memory game.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

This is a very simple but effective science speed stacking game.  It is great for helping students to memorise terms and sequences such as geological periods.  Lots of different labels can be created, perhaps even leading to the development of a dinosaur themed speed stacking game.

Extension Ideas

  • Challenge the students to create the best way of visually displaying the data
  • Can the class calculate the mode, median and mean
  • Plot a distribution curve of the timing results, what are the variances?
  • Can the students devise science themed speed stacking games of their own?

For prehistoric animal themed teaching resources including model kits, crafts and real fossils: Replicas of Fossil Animals – Educational Toys and Games.

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