I mentioned last week that I have started collecting resources that we plan on using with our daughter in her year 8 academic year. And although I am still gathering together all my science items there is one resource which arrived last week and which both my kids have actually already been using and I REALLY LIKE. It is a Biology Matching pairs game that currently only sells for £4.99 and really is a great science activity. (My husband who has been doing a lot of physics with my daughter has already asked why I don’t have the physics version of this game – he is right I should also get that one.)

Okay First things first. If you look on the site it is marketed as KS3 resource. And it does cover KS3 biology but I have already been using the cards with my youngest (he is 9 years old). Granted he loves animal biology and has very good knowledge in that area so when he has a go at using the cards we separate out the cards that deal with this area.

Why would we do this? We like to work on topics together even though my kids would be 3 years apart in a school system for things like Science and History when I am working on topics with his older sister my youngest always sits with us and joins in. He likes it that way, he likes to be included and it works well for us. So when he sees his sister using resources like these cards he naturally wants to try them himself. And the beauty of these cards is you can actually do that, you can split the pack up and share them between 2 kids and you can separate out the cards that you think a younger sibling can work on while his older sibling tries different cards. I think this set works really well if you are educating 2 kids regardless of the fact that they might be different ages.

The cards are split into 5 different sections (each section is colour coded) and altogether you get 75 different images which you need to match to 75 definitions. Which I think is actually quite a lot (I don’t think I could print out all these cards for £4.99).

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The set also comes with an answer booklet (which is very handy).

We have only had the set for a few days but so far we have used in it 2 different ways. Firstly as a straight forward revision activity – the kids matched the cards for definitions that I knew we had already learnt about (I sifted these out of the set).

And secondly as a new learning activity. My daughter is very tactile she likes to hold things, pick up items and feel something in her hands when she is learning so I selected cards that were linked to some reading that she had just done on the computer. It was a new section so I suggested she just try. She matched the cards that she could and then she took the answer booklet and searched for the cards that she did not know in the booklet and matched those. By just doing this a few times I know she will pick up the new definitions very quickly because not only is she using her hands but there are visual clues (the images) which are linked to the definitions and she always learn better when she can link words to a picture.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Like I said above – it is early days and the pairs game is a very new resource for us but I have really been so impressed with how many cards they included and the wide range of definitions that I wanted to write something now. We will definitely be using this set during the next academic year and I am also going to invest in the Physics set (and I am sure at some stage in the chemistry set as well – in total honesty if they had a Geography set I would also get that).

Admin – the price that I mention in the post is correct at the time of writing this.