GAME LOGIC: LEVEL UP AND CREATE YOUR OWN GAMES WITH SCIENCE ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS

What was the last game you played? Video game, board game, world building game?

In Game Logic: Level Up and Create Your Own Games with Science Activities for Kids, middle schoolers take on the world of games by figuring out what makes them challenging, fun, and addictive! Kids love games. Board games are still wildly popular, despite the profusion of video gaming devices that reach audiences as young as toddlerhood. World-building games such as Settlers of Catan and Dungeons & Dragons are played by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, both online and in living rooms, and gaming conferences occur around the globe, including hundreds in the United States alone. This makes gaming a perfect backdrop for learning new skills!

This book takes kids on a journey to discover the history of games, and then leads them from their initial idea for a new game through several iterations of a game all the way to playing the final version of a game they created. Educators use games as a way to introduce logic, collaboration, and persistence in classrooms, and Game Logic is the perfect companion. Kids explore the processes of both playing and creating games while developing critical and creative thinking skills that apply to tasks and concepts across academic fields.

Game Logic includes hands-on STEAM activities and critical thinking exercises related to games. Fun facts, links to online primary sources and other supplemental material, and essential questions encourage readers to dive deeper into the games they love to discover what makes them tick.

Nomad Press books integrate content with participation. Common Core State Standards, the Next Generation Science Standards, and STEM Education all place project-based learning as key building blocks in education. Combining content with inquiry-based projects stimulates learning and makes it active and alive. Nomad’s unique approach simultaneously grounds kids in factual knowledge while allowing them the space to be curious, creative, and critical thinkers.

Angie Smibert is the author of more than 20 nonfiction books about science and technology for kids, including Artificial Intelligence: Thinking Machines and Smart Robots with Science Activities for Kids from Nomad Press. Before writing full time, she helped pioneer online training at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. She received NASA’s prestigious Silver Snoopy as well as several other awards for her work. Besides writing, she also teaches writing –and sometimes human-computer interaction―for Indiana University East. She lives in Roanoke, Virginia.

Lena H. Chandhok earned her degree from the Center for Cartoon Studies in 2011. Her work has been featured in Slate Magazine and in various anthologies and she has illustrated several books for Nomad Press. Lena currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.