Features
Zoology Student's Got Game
Turning kids on to nature is purpose of board game series created by U of G student
BY ANDREW VOWLES
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| Liv Monck-Whipp has designed and produced five board games that teach kids about the natural world. Photo by Martin Schwalbe |
Dogs, cats, a hedgehog, gerbils, rats, mice, fish, newts especially the newts. Liv Monck-Whipp had all kinds of pets while she was growing up and planning to become a veterinarian. These days she has only a dog and a cat back home in Windsor and a few fish in her residence room. But the fourth-year zoology student has assembled a menagerie of sorts to populate a new line of board games that she hopes will turn on a generation of kids to nature.
Monck-Whipp has designed and produced five children's games so far. With a sixth game in the works, she now hopes to sell her series to educators and even to book chains and toy stores.
She knows she may face an uphill struggle in selling educational board games to the Nintendo and Wii generation. But she hopes to lure electronic-savvy kids with something of the visceral connection to the outdoors developed during her own outdoorsy youth in southwestern Ontario.
I'd like them to think that nature is as cool as all the video games and cartoons they see on TV, she says. When they get outside, it's so much more interactive than TV. I'd like them to be interested in science.
Under her own imprint of Global Newt Games, Monck-Whipp has designed two game lines, all played on custom-designed boards with pieces and cards depicting various organisms.
One series teaches players about ecology by building on key concepts from one game to the next. Global-Mania challenges kids aged three to six to sort out mammals, birds and invertebrates by what they eat or where they live. Aqua-Mania teaches players aged six to nine about ecosystems in and around water. In Biome-Mania, players aged nine and older build terrestrial food chains by answering questions as they move around the board.
Her second series is about social insects. Players learn about insect biology and behaviour in Ant Colony (ages nine and up) and Bee Hive (six to nine). She's now completing a third game on termites for ages three to six.
All the games may be played alone or with others, and players or teams can choose to compete or co-operate. The idea is to enable kids to have fun while progressively learning more about the natural world, she says.
To assemble the games' content, Monck-Whipp started with her classroom lessons at Guelph and pursued her own research. I learned a ton about organisms and biomes doing the first set.
She says having to explain the material in kid-friendly terms forced her to learn it more thoroughly herself. You have to go through the process and explain it to a child.
Monck-Whipp, who is taking a course at Guelph this summer to complete her degree, also grew to appreciate good teachers and lecturers no small consideration as she's now thinking about becoming a teacher herself.
She says Profs. Fred Ramprashad, Tom Nudds and Rob McLaughlin all in the Department of Integrative Biology were particularly inspiring.
Equally important was her Grade 6 teacher, who started Monck-Whipp on a tree-planting kick that has continued through her university years, including a stint last summer in New Zealand. Her outdoor experiences also included frequent school camping trips and field trips and family outings around Lake Erie.
Then there were all the animals.
It was obvious to me since Olivia was a very small child that she was science-oriented, says her mother, Karen Monck. We had 19 pet animals at one time.
Monck is owner of Benchmark Publishing and Design Inc. in Windsor, which makes and sells the games. The company also markets the Liv Wylde series of kids' nature books written and illustrated by Guelph zoology student Jessica Morrison. First released last summer, the series now consists of six titles, including new books on how animals live in the desert, the Arctic and the tropics. (See At Guelph story Go Wild With Liv Wylde, Oct. 25, 2006.)
For the past four years, Morrison and Monck-Whipp have traded book and game ideas back and forth as classmates and roommates at Guelph. (Morrison plans to pursue graduate studies in animal welfare and philosophy.)
Monck-Whipp created the forerunner of Biome-Mania as a high school biology project. She spent her undergraduate summers developing her ideas, including designing artwork and concepts subsequently used by her mother to produce the games.
They've promoted the games to science teachers and Montessori schools and had a booth at a New York trade show earlier this year.
People were very excited about them, says Monck. I've done a lot of searching around and I can't find anything like any of them. We're focusing on the social skills. Each game is designed to help kids develop social skills in the way they're played, which I think sets them apart from other games.
The board games and the Liv Wylde books are marketed together under the Blue Green Dreams label at www.bluegreendreams.com.