I was traveling at the end of last week and looking for something for my younger son to work on while I was away. I happened to see this (re)tweet from Keith Devlin:
and decided to check out Dragonbox. Turns out that they have a geometry game called Element that seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. Until tonight I’ve not seen much of the game, but here are some thoughts from my younger son (3rd grade) and then some quicker thoughts from my older son (5th grade) who played the game for the first time tonight.
I can tell you for sure that the game is engaging!
First up is my son’s description of the game and some of the things that he’s learned:
Here’s a 5 minute stretch of him playing the game. I don’t understand the game well enough to help him or even say what’s going on here, but there’s certainly some interesting problem solving.
Finally, here’s a quick recap from him of some of the things he’s learned and some of the things he’s hoping to learn:
Finally, here are some quick comments from my older son after he played the game for about 30 min.
So, despite not having a full understanding of the game, I’m happy with the experience that both kids have had with this game so far. There is certainly no doubt about the enthusiasm they have for it – even trying to put the game away to go to bed wasn’t easy!
I’m also glad to hear both of them talk about shapes with such enthusiasm, too. Hopefully I can figure out a good way to incorporate resources like this into more of the traditional work we are doing in geometry.
Mike's Math Page 
My son loved elements even more than the original dragonbox (which is also quite cool). Perhaps this was due to him being a year older 8 when he saw the 2nd one. I also played both all the way through. If I could extend elements one way, I wish it explored the concept of similar triangles.