My son is very much someone who remembers things that HE finds interesting or amusing but if it is not something he is interested it he seems to forget it very quickly.

He loves animals so biology has always been a key subject for him. Which is why the very first Oaka Book board game that we ever tried was the Predators and Producers game – big hit! After that we went on and tried two other games – On the Map and Space Race – both of which have been popular. So when I was raking my brain trying to figure out how I was going to get him to remember things about changing states and materials – which he is really NOT interested in – I thought the Oaka Books materials game (What’s the Matter?) might work with him.

Now I must be honest, this is really NOT an area that he is interested in so to begin with we actually played the first 2 games with only the Lower KS2 question cards. If you have not played these games before the question cards are split into two groups – which you can distinguish based on the colour of the cards – the first 113 cards are for Lower KS2 years (so UK school year 3 and 4) and the second set of 113 cards are for Upper KS2 years (so UK school years 5 and 6). With the other games we have never stuck to this split, we have always mixed up the cards, but my son would be year 4 if he was in school and because I was trying to get some of these facts to stick and get him to enjoy himself without being frustrated I thought we would stick with the age range suggested.

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And it worked really well. He enjoyed the game, had a few laughs and I started to notice some of the concepts were sticking.

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So gradually we started including some the Upper KS2 questions. And again it worked, he was remembering things.

If you have not heard about the Oaka Books Board games this is what it is – think snakes and ladder concept. In this case if you land on a solid you go up and if you land on a liquid you go down. When you land on a square with a question mark you get to answer a question and if you get it right you get some point cards.

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A straight forward board game, with easy to follow rules but what it does do is it makes learning/ revision fun and a LOT more interesting than worksheets.

We have been big fans of the Oaka Books board games and this is no exception. The kids and I recommend the What’s The Matter? game for Science fun.