Medieval History Memory Game Review

We were given the opportunity to review this Medieval History Memory Game from The Classical Historian. The Classical HIstorian family, John and Zdenka De Gree live with their 6 children in California. With a desire to teach their children created this curriculum. It is their desire to promote critical thinking through thoughtful discussions of history.

We received the memory game Medieval History for ages 3+. The idea is like with any memory game to spread the cards out face down and each player takes turn to find matches. On their website they do offer a PDF file with instructions on a variation to play this game by placing the cards in categories from Europe, The Americas, Far East, Arabia.

Selena and I set out to play the memory match game. Selena was very interested but soon lost her enthusiasm due to not fully understanding what the pictures on the cards were. She was really struggling with just the Memory game since the pictures really did not hold any meaning to her. She kept asking “What is this?” “What does it mean?” I quickly realized that the game itself had no meaning to her. I finally asked her to go through the cards and find something that she wanted to learn about.

She knew exactly what she wanted to learn more about, and appeared with the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper cards. We turned our attention to these two cards and did some research on Leonardo Da Vinci as well as the paintings themselves. We spent two days discussing our research, and when Selena read that Leonardo Da Vinci liked having the ability to combine both Science and Art, her face lit up. Now her questions turned to “How does Science have anything to do with Art?” This opened a whole new discussion of looking at Art with a Scientific mind, to see the nature, color blends, angles, shapes, and how we can study a subject so hard just like we do when we are studying every inch of a flower so that we can paint every last detail of that object. Now Selena’s art appreciation has began to develop and I catch her drawing pictures, her coloring is improving, as well as her thirst for information about art. Go figure if I can just tie Science in with anything we are doing she will be way more interested.

We liked how the cards were made, the pictures were very well done and very colorful. What little bit of information on each card was done in a manner for easy reading. The card size was perfect for a Memory Match game. We did have a lot of fun looking through them, and trying to answer all the questions that Selena had about the different pictures, times, and items. I know a lot of families who teach the Classical method, and believe this game would be very warmly welcomed in their home.

While we did not enjoy the game in it’s entirely, and I would recommend for younger children to maybe work on a category at a time instead of trying to tackle the entire game like we did. We found a valuable use and learning tool from the game, but I really feel strongly that this is a game that a Classical Homeschool would appreciate a lot more then we probably did.

You can purchase the game from The Classical HIstorian for 14.95. They do offer two other memory match games, Ancient History, and American History. Also while you are there check out all their other curriculum options from online schooling, plenty of other game options, to textbooks.