The Old Schoolhouse® Product & Curriculum Reviews

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Hunch Review by Lyla Morcom

Games by Absolute Zero
betsy@gamesbyabsolutezero.com
https://www.gamesbyabsolutezero.com/

Attractively packaged in a plastic carry case comes the card game Hunch by Absolute Zero. Everything needed to play the game comes in a case that perfectly fits the deck and keeps all the cards contained without the worry of a ripped box. All players need to have is paper and a pen to keep score. For players who have not yet learned negative numbers, a calculator may also be useful as scoring can be tricky. If desired, the website also has alternative ways to play the game. The game sells for $16.00.

Hunch is described as intended for Players Age 9+. While not explicitly designed as a homeschool product, we found it helpful and fun to add to our math lessons. We used this to help learn addition and subtraction with negative and positive numbers. Because there is also a bit of guessing (hunches) involved, we learned about strategy.

We found this game to be quite fun to play. I played it with my 11-year-old (6th grader) as a fun way to begin reinforcing a new math concept. Her math curriculum just introduced negative numbers, and we thought this would be more interesting than more worksheets. We enjoyed the game and had a lot of giggles while playing together. It was fun to learn to strategize how the game worked after a few rounds, and we enjoyed trying to beat one another.

Our biggest frustration was scoring. We did not completely understand how to do the scoring, and the scorecard provided was not quite enough. However, after printing scorecards from the company's website, we did much better. Both of us struggled a bit at the beginning, it had been many years since this mom has worked with negative numbers, and my math was quite a bit rustier than anticipated. An example card of scoring might have been more helpful, but we figured it out.

Overall, I would recommend this game for upper elementary and higher grades. The game is quite fun to play and helps to bring home lessons on negative numbers, which can be tricky initially.

Product Review by Lyla Morcom, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, January 2021

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