Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Wii games?

I vote for Endless Ocean and Big Brain Academy if you are looking for educational games. I totally agree that Endless Ocean is very calming. The music is very nice, and my son can now identify any fish he sees on the discovery channel or while watching the new series, Life. The diver even gets dolphin pals to explore with, and the game is very realistic. Our whole family loves Big Brain Academy. You can compete against each other or just against yourself as it keeps a record of your performance, like a report card.

My son is crazy about Lego Starwars, Lego Indiana Jones, and Scooby Doo. To me, they are not too violent. My son is very sensitive to scary things. BUT, I could see that these might be a bit violent to some. No blood, but there is fighting. I like the problem solving aspect to these games. Lots of abstract reasoning. My son has learned a good lesson in persistence from these games. I'm certainly not saying they are educational, but there are some good qualities to them.

My ds6 just said that Wii Sports is educational because you learn to play different sports. LOL These are good family games. We have had lots of fun with tennis and bowling especially. We all really like MarioKart as well, but it's definitely not educational. It's a driving game and is lots of fun for all of us. Good for working on visual spatial skills or hand-eye coordination? LOL

Wii fit promotes exercise and good health. We have this, and I hate to admit we haven't used it much.

We have to limit Wii time, or our son would become completely addicted. He has no self-control when it comes to Wii. It's the best reward and incentive we can use in our house, though! Ds6 is only allowed to play it once homework is completed and when he doesn't have another activity. If we see that it's causing bad behavior (which has happened in the past), we take a break from it for a while. These days, he tolerates it very well without behavior issues for the most part. He knows if we see any meltdowns when it's time to turn it off, he won't get to play for a while. We also provide opportunities to earn Wii time.

Hope this helps.

We buckled on the Wii too after about a year of begging and pleading. I kind of think if it's something they're THAT excited about, it's kind of best to let them get it out of their system. That being said, we do use a timer. My DS9 typically gets 20-30 minutes a day and loses the next day if he ignores the timer. Being consistent on timer use has been a life saver for us. He would otherwise be extremely addicted.

We don't have any "educational" games, but some of them require long term strategy and planning. And some of them are just fun. Even for me! I would watch the game ratings. I've been ok, with everything under the TEEN level. And we even do have one TEEN game I think is ok (Twilight Princess). I agree with the Boom Blox and Harvest Moon recommendations.

We go a bit the other way and just don't worry about how much time he plays. DS is 7 and DH is a gamer, my brother is a gamer and a web designer and my dad is a computer programmer. It's in his genes to be a gamer too :-) I also found that the more I try to control it, the worse his craving for it is. If I just leave it be with a basic "homework first" rule, he often chooses other things.

For games, we have Boom Blox and Boom Blox Bash Party, MySims Racing, Mario Kart, Mario Party, Super Mario Galaxy, Wii Fit, Wii Sports, all the Lego games and a few others. I don't let him play anything with guns or violence but the Lego games are so unrealistic that I don't worry about it. I also find the puzzle-solving requirements of the Lego games to be more challenging than most others.

The hardest puzzle game we've played is Zack and Wiki's quest. DH had to get cheat codes online because the logic puzzles were so hard in a few places!

We primarily play family games together and DS rarely plays Wii alone. He has his Nintendo DS for that.

As for the educational component, I have a reluctant reader who is self-taught and was purely inspired to learn by Pokemon games on the DS. I refused to read the directions to him- if he wanted to play he had to figure it out. He jumped 3 grade levels in reading in just about a month... I credit Pokemon :-)

Yay Pokemon!! All four of my kids are fans. This is one game I have never minded. We even have a file of Pokemon that everyone in the family has drawn and given attacks and levels and such since DS9 is hoping to someday design his own game with a new region. It is also a game that keeps their interest but never leads to arguments. Everyone helps everyone - tips for where to find a special pokeball or best moves against a gym leader.

The other nice side for Wii is that Netflix feeds through it. We use netflix extensively for homeschooling and you can use the "watch instantly" feature on the Wii to watch your movie on the TV.

Enlighting discussion. Thanks folks!

Shari, what's on Netflix that you use for HSing? I'm curious...

DeeDee

In addition to sports games & netflix (I think we have seen every episode of Mythbusters available), my kids like Wii Music & Ultimate I Spy.

I'll have to check out some of these games, thanks!

As for keeping the gaming in check, we do a token system. They earn tokens for being good, playing nicely, doing as told, etc. In return, they can redeem their tokens (3) for 30 minutes of Wii. It's worked really well with DS5 because he was trying to play it ALL THE TIME and this way he has to "pay" for it and it makes him think "do I really want to play that much?"