Rolling the Dice

Today my sons and I played Pan-gee-ah, a little-known dinosaur game produced in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia by an independant game-maker. We picked it up at the Fundy Geological Museum in Parrsborough a year or two ago.

You can find it on eBay or kijiji, or you can try contacting the museum through their website at http://museum.gov.ns.ca/fgm/en/home/default.aspx

The game is a little different than most, and it is definitely educational. It has four different kinds of cards - Jurrasic, Triassic and Cretaceous cards, each with a different dinosaur on it (with information about where it is found, how big it was and whether it was a herbivore or a carnivore), as well as Fossil cards for each period, as well as ones labelled Mesozoic.

Ther are two rounds - in the first round you collect dinosaur cards from each of the three eras, and in the second you get your opponents to lose cards by making the dinosaurs go “extinct”.

One of the great things about the game is that you can use as many cards as you like to make the game whatever length you want. For instance, we played with 10 dinosaurs from each era, and it took us about 90 minutes. It probably would have only taken us an hour, but my 5 year old is REALLY slow at rolling the dice and moving his piece around the board.

While we played, I suggested to my 7-year-old that this would be a good game to invite a friend from school over to play.

It really is meant for the 7-10 set, especially ones who love dinosaurs. Though, if you have patience, kids as young as 4 or 5 can play - reading is not required, because everything is colour-coded.

There’s a plethora of educational games like this one out there. Don’t be afraid to pick one up just because it’s not a brand name. Look for games on topics that your kids are interested in, and you’ll probably have lots of success.

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