I have been using the Core Curriculum questions to play Trivial Pursuit with my children and their friends. It has worked very nicely - the kids have all enjoyed it and it strongly reinforces the knowledge that the children are supposed to be learning. In order to prepare the pages, print a page of questions on a color ink jet (or color laser) printer, flip the page over, and print the corresponding answers on the back of the page. So far, I have only worked with one page per subject (there are six categories - Literature, Geography, History, Art, Mathematics, and Science), but this will work best with two pages (100 questions at 50 questions per page).

If you are already familiar with the rules of the board game Trivial Pursuit, you can skip this paragraph. To play Trivial Pursuit, you role a six sided die, and advance your game token the number of spaces indicated on the die. In order to continue your turn, you must  correctly answer the question from one of six categories on a card (one drawn from a stack of about a thousand cards). The category of your question is determined by the color of the square your game piece has landed on (for example, blue is arts and literature, yellow is history, green is science, etc.) . If you answer the question correctly, you role again, move your game piece, and have to answer the question on the next card that matches the category your piece has landed on. There are six special locations on the board (one for each of the six question categories) called wedge positions. When a player correctly answers a question on a wedge position, they receive a small plastic wedge (of the same color as the question category they just answered) that fits into their game piece. The object of the game is to be the first player to collect all six wedges (one for each of the six question categories) and return your game piece to the center of the board.

The way we use the Core Knowledge questions to play this game is that we substitute the questions from the six categories I put together from the Core Knowledge books for the questions on cards that came with the Trivial Pursuit game. The categories are color coded to match the colors of the squares on the Trivial Pursuit board (blue for Literature, pink for Geography, yellow for History, etc.). The color of the category is indicated by the color of the page headers for that category's questions.  Because the questions are numbered, we roll a pair of percent dice to randomly generate a number between 1 and 100 inconclusive to determine which question to ask. Percent dice are used for Roll Playing Games (like Dungeons and Dragons) and are available from most hobby stores. They consist of two ten sided dice, one bearing the digit 0 - 9 , and the other bearing the numbers 00 - 90, skipping by tens (00, 10, 20, 30,...). Rolling these dice results in a random number between 1 and 100 by adding the numbers on the two dice (with 0 corresponding to 100). For example, if the dice show 6 and 20, you have rolled a 26 and should ask question 26. Otherwise, the play is the same as using the cards that came with the Trivial Pursuit Game. One nice advantage of this is that when you feel a child has mastered a particular set of questions, you can substitute a different set questions that you want him/her to learn. Because you can have different sets of questions for each child, each child can play at their own level. For instance, when we play, my 5 year old daughter uses questions from her Kindergartner book, my 10 year old son uses questions from the Third Grade book, and I use the questions that came with the Trivial Pursuit game. I don't know of any other game where such a range of ages can all play competitively.

If you want to speed the game up, you can award a player a wedge for each question they answer instead of waiting until they land on one of the six special wedge spaces. When the player wins a wedge their turn ends, but if they correctly answers a question for a category for which they already have the wedge, they role the six sided die to move to another space and get another question. Their play continues until the earn another wedge or miss a question. This makes the game go much, much faster.

I am a programmer and have the ability to arrange the questions pretty easily (although I am not yet up to making cards similar to those that come with the Trivial Pursuit game. I welcome suggestions on how to make better use of these questions, either as they currently are laid out or by arranging them in a different manner. I would really like to see them used by someone besides just my immediate family. Please e-mail me (Robert Williams) at rwms@gate.net if you have any ideas.
 

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