Educational ColorKu Logic Game
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Logic games stretch kids’ thinking, improving their deductive reasoning, organizational skills, and concentration. The Sudoku-like game, ColorKu, challenges kids to use the colorful marbles on a wooden grid to solve puzzles. The object of the game is to only have 1 of each color per each row, column, and 3×3 box. Where Sudoku uses the digits 1 – 9, ColorKu uses 9 colors.
How to Play ColorKu
1. Start with one of the 104 puzzle cards consisting of 5 levels of difficulty. Use the picture clues to pre-fill the wooden grid.
2. Fill in the rest of the board. Make sure that each row, column, and 3×3 box only have 1 of each color.
3. Fortunately, the answers to the puzzles are included on each puzzle card. We’ve needed these to check our work!
Visible Critical Thinking Strategies
Like Sudoku, strategies help solve the ColorKu puzzles. What’s more, explaining and analyzing those strategies benefit kids even more than solving the puzzles. Why? Because talking about thinking out loud helps make thinking visible (also called metacognition) and helps kids use the strategies in other situations. Help your children with specific strategies.
example: Choose a row, column, or box that has the most colors filled in. Look to see what colors are missing. See if you can determine where any those colors go by cross checking with the rest of the grid. Sometimes you can eliminate where a color can not go and that helps you figure out where it goes.
Encourage your kids to share their strategies, or even write a book of strategy tips!
Educational Logic Games
Logic games make learning fun and engaging. Here are more ideas for other logic games I recommend:
Gravity Maze: a Marble Logic Game
Nowhere To Go: a Strategy Game for Two Players