Pinterest for Education: Make Your Own U.S. Presidents Guess Who? Game

Here’s a great idea for this week: Make your own Guess Who? game for the U.S. presidents. This idea was brought to us via Felicia Ciarelli’s Classroom Ideas board on Pinterest, but it was originally posted on Game Board Geek.

This is a hands-on way to get your students to remember the names of the 44 presidents and why they are important. This would be a great activity for engaging students in the 2012 election or ending a unit on U.S. presidents.

All you need is:

• A Guess Who? game board
• Photos of all 44 presidents (Note: You’ll need 3 copies of the photos—one for the red board, one for the blue board, and one for the extra yellow face cards for students to draw from)

Each board can hold only 24 cards at a time, so you’ll have to occasionally swap out the boards to make sure all 44 U.S. presidents are circulated. Here is a sample set of 24 president face cards to get you started, originally from Board Game Geek.

Here are the rules:

• Each player gets a game board with a set of the same 24 presidential cards.
• Each player draws a card from the extra deck of face cards. These are the same 24 presidents.
• One student will start by asking a question about their opponent’s mystery U.S. president.
• Students should ask questions that help them figure out who the mystery president is on their opponent’s face card. Opponents answer questions with either a “Yes” or a “No.”
• For instance, your first question could be, “Did your president engage in a major war?” If your opponent answers “No,” you can eliminate all of the presidents who have engaged in a major war. Questions can get very clever and will require some prior knowledge about U.S. presidents.
• Students can use their turn to ask a question or guess their opponent’s president. Be sure to narrow the list before asking a more specific question about the mystery president, such as, “Does your president have wooden teeth?”

Here are some other questions to inspire your students:

1. Was your president a Republican or Democrat?
2. Did you president live in the 18th century
3. Was your president a former senator or governor?
4. Was your president assassinated?
5. Did your president serve more than one term?
6. Has your president served as a vice president?