Teen Learning Games and Activities

Using Games and Activities to Teach Teens

Games and activities are often used to enhance learning for elementary-aged students. However, by the time students reach middle and high school, they often spend much of their time taking notes and completing written work. Teens can benefit from learning games just as much as elementary-aged children because it allows them to become engaged in the material and be excited about learning skills and concepts.

Make a Timeline

Timelines teach teens how to organize information from a certain period of time in chronological order. Have your teen create a timeline of his life with what he believes to be the ten most significant events thus far. Have him write down the events, then put them into chronological order according to date. Then, give him a long piece of paper to create his project. If he is able to, have him find photographs of those events to paste onto his timeline. Finally, encourage your teen to add five more events that he hopes will happen in the future.

Budgeting

This activity will teach your teen how basic math skills can be applied to a real-life situation. Tell your teen that she has earned a pretend entry-level job and her monthly income is $2,000 a month. Give her a newspaper and have her create a budget that includes rent, car payments and food for six months. You can also give her unexpected deductions, such as car repairs as an added challenge.

Exploding Bag Experiment

Teach your teen to pop a bag using chemistry. You will need:

• One zip-lock bag
• Baking soda
• Warm water
• Vinegar
• Measuring cups and spoons
• A tissue

Go outdoors for this experiment. Pour ¼ of a cup of warm water into the zip-lock bag. Next, add ½ of a cup of vinegar. Get a tissue and put three teaspoons of baking soda in the middle of it and fold all four corners in so that it forms a small pouch. Put the tissue into the zip-lock bag and quickly zip it shut. Place the bag on the ground and stay a few feet back and watch the bag expand until it pops!

Have your teen hypothesize why this combination of materials caused the bag to explode. Afterward, explain that when the baking soda and vinegar mix together, a chemical reaction occurs and creates a gas called carbon dioxide. This gas keeps building in the bag until it no longer has any more room in it and must pop.

Encourage your teen to experiment with different amounts of baking soda and vinegar as well as the temperature of the water to see if it makes any difference in the amount of time it takes for the bag to explode.