The Presidential Game

Guess what we got to try out?  The Presidential Game!  

It got here the week before we started school, but I saved it for the first day of school, thinking that we'd do something fun to get off to a good start.  

It was a good plan.  We sat down with trail mix and read the directions together to figure it out.  

It seemed simple enough.  It's a team played, dice based game.  It retails for $35, and is designed for ages 11 and up, although Jack, age 9, did well as part of a team.  

Josiah teamed up with Jack, and Brianna and Eli paired together.

I tend to be grossly non-political, so the discussion was good for all of us.  Questions came up in the course of playing.  "What's a Republican?  What's a Democrat?  How come California gets so many chips and Wyoming only gets a couple?"  

Working in teams is always a challenge, and there were times when Eli wanted to "fight" back and forth over a single state, and Brianna wanted to set out to conquer unclaimed states.  

The first time we played, we did the "fundraising" part incorrectly (although our way worked, too), but upon discussing the game with other reviewers, I realized our mistake and we played the right way from the second time on.  

I have to say, it was a two thumbs up game in our house.  The kids asked to play it again, which is always a good sign, and no one seemed to notice that they were learning.  ;)  Since I usually kept score, I would throw subtle homeschooler questions into the fray from time to time.  "Oh, you're campaigning in New Mexico?  Do you remember the capital of New Mexico?"  Okay, maybe not terribly subtle, but they didn't seem to mind.  Somewhere around here, I have a set of 50 states flash cards I should dig up and have on hand next time we play so we can familiarize ourselves with additional facts while we play.  

We got so into it, in fact, that campaign posters were created.

Same shirt, different day, LOL

This would make a great compliment to a study of American History or Government, or be a fun way to pass an election night in between coloring in states as results come in.  

There's also an interactive webmap that can be used to track your game results on a computer, tablet, or phone.  This might be a fun feature for a player who likes their screen time.  We ended up not using the interactive webmap.  I kept score on the included notepad, instead.  

Additional reviews of The Presidential Game can be found here:  

   Have you clicked for us today?  Thank you!