Learning about Biomes Game Cards

• Home
• Blog
• Elementary Learning
• Learning about Biomes Game Cards

My son is currently taking Geology from Athena's Academy, using the Focus on Geology textbook from Real-Science-4-Kids. It's labeled a Middle School textbook, and his class is using it as a nice overview of the various concepts of geology. Their online class spent extra time learning about volcanoes, earthquakes and other ways the earth's crust changes. They've spent time learning about rocks and the layers of the earth. Now he's moving in to the other aspects of the earth, such as the atmosphere and now the biosphere. To review the various biomes on earth, I made biomes game cards for us to play with and to spark discussion. 

I made four cards for each of the eight land-based biomes in Raisin's text book: tundra, taiga (boreal forest), temperate deciduous forest, temperate grasslands, desert, savanna, tropical rainforest, and chapparal. There are so many different ways to categorize the biomes of the earth that I decided it would be easiest to just follow his textbook. (His textbook also has biomes for fresh water and marine water biomes.) For each biome, I made a card with a written description of the biome, as well as one with a basic world map of where the biome can be found. I also included two cards with photographs of some of the land in that type of biome.

At first, my game intention was to use these cards like a "Go Fish" type of game, in which the players take turns asking if the other players have cards. My son told me he did not want to play go fish with them. So we figured out another game.

In our biomes game, each player is trying to collect biomes. We had three players (Raisin, Strawberry, and myself). We took out two biomes and dealt all the rest of the cards out, so we each had eight cards. So, we needed to collect two different biomes each. We would trade one or two cards with each other on the table, but we could not see what the others were collecting or getting rid of! Thus, it was a surprise when we picked up a card, and we had to keep trading until we got all of two biomes!

The kids found this hilarious! Strawberry, who cannot read, could still match the colors on the sides of the cards. She laughed whenever we traded and she'd have the same color again. She loved to collect her favorite color. Raisin thought it was lots of fun to swap secretly and race to win.

After someone won two biomes, I asked the winner to find similarities and differences between the two biomes. Raisin could read the description, compare the maps, or look at the pictures. Strawberry would look at the photos. I liked that I could find real pictures for each of the biomes, because it helps make it more real.

As we discussed the biomes, we talked about how they were different from habitats. Using our suburban Chicago area as an example, I talked about taking out the forests and grassland in our areas to make way for our "suburban" habitat and/or a man-made pond habitat. That helped Raisin see that the biomes stay the same, even as habitats are changed.

Since I went to the trouble of making the maps of the eight biomes, I also decided to put in a full world map with all of the biomes on it. This will help us keep the discussion going as we talk about the biomes.

Another way we played with the cards was we sat in a circle and traded one card at a time. Each player takes one card out of his or her hand and places it on the table to his left. The person on the left picks it up and has to discard the same way. Play continues until a player calls out that he or she has collected two biomes! (It's easier for my kids with just 4 cards, 1 biome, this way).

• With three players, use six biomes. Collect two biomes.
• With four players, use all eight biomes. Collect two biomes.
• With five or more players, you could use that number of biomes and only collect one biome to win.

There are so many more possibilities for learning using the biomes game cards as the basis for discussion! Get yours for free when you sign up to become a Line upon Line Learning VIP.

Want more ideas for learning about biomes? See the posts below.

Biome Sorting Mats for Forests from Life Over C's
Build a Desert Biome from Schooling a Monkey
Sensory Bottle Biomes from Parenting Chaos
Biome Game Cards from Line Upon Line Learning
Biome Reports from Still Playing School
{FREE} Plants & Animals in the Tropical Rainforest Biome Cards from Preschool Powol Packets