When I receive a product through the Review Crew, usually it’s curricula of some sort, but with Dig-It Games we received something much more fun that your average curricula product (I find curricula fun and exciting but the children not so much). Mayan Mysteries is an online game that will have children in grades 5 to 9 enter the Mayan world and learn a little about:
- the Mayan math system
- see artifacts
- learn about the Mayan calendar
- and more
The vision of Dig-It Games is, “Dig-It! Games is dedicated to encouraging kids to explore the world around them through historically accurate content that conforms to curriculum standards and seamlessly blends entertainment and learning“. I played it along with my 11 year old daughter, I also let my 8 year old and 6 year old play but the 6 year old needed me to do all the reading and he would get frustrated when the pages loaded slowly and my 8 year old really isn’t one for computer games. My 11 year old and I really liked it – I needed her help in figuring out the Mayan currency. We have not completed the game yet but there are mentions of sacrifices and violence, that may not be appropriate for all children.
Since we’ve studied the Mayan culture it was fun to travel along with Team Q, that includes Professor Alex Quinn, his nephew and niece Fiona and Charlie as your child helps to track the looter who may or may not be a person named Ladrone. Your child will uncover artifacts by having to chose the correct archaeological tool without destroying the artifact and as the child continues they will earn achievements and maybe even be added to the leader board if they are successful.
I let my children play as time allowed each day, for us, it took a long time to get through each area, there is a lot of reading and then quizzes periodically on what you’ve read and depending on your internet speed it may take some images/pages longer to load which means we could play for an hour but not get very far at all – we have high speed DSL but it’s not ‘high speed’. We really enjoyed the graphics as they were bright and colorful and the music added an ancient flair to the game.
I must note that there were ‘spirit guides’ who were, it seem, reincarnations of Mayans kings (if I read it right) and that was my one major issue with it but since my oldest and I were the only ones playing it she was able to ignore that part and just play the game. I know I have readers that would appreciate knowing that detail though – otherwise I didn’t find anything objectionable in the content. Even though we haven’t completed the whole game yet, there is a part 2 to be released so that the whole mystery can be solved. The online version, which I received sells for $21.99 for a single user, there is also an iPad version available. You can read other reviews from other homeschool parents of both the online and iPad versions by visiting the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog.
GrowingForChrist 