Any suggestions for geography jigsaw/board game for DD(12)?

[curly100]

DD's geography is hopeless, although she's quite well travelled she doesn't seem to have a clue about countries/capitals/cities eg recently answering the question 'What S is a country in the UK?' with Switzerland despite us living in Scotland!

When I was a child we had a fantastic jigsaw puzzle of a map of Europe which had little images of things associated with the countries and you had to slot name labels for the capital cities into the right holes but I can't see anything like that available now.

Any suggestions for a 12 year old?

Shameless place mark

We have maponinoes in various editions which is fun, as is Flags of the world, which is about the countries rather than where they are.

We also love ticket to ride — the Europe edition which has cities around Europe which you join up with trains. Not strictly geogaraphical and some of the places are ancient names, but still gives an idea/ overview

This jigsaw puzzle www.brightminds.co.uk/collections/world-geography/products/usborne-the-world-sam-smith-9781474937610
And this card game www.amazon.co.uk/BACKPACKER-Ultimate-Travel-pocket-travelling/dp/B0030F6IL2?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

How about Wonder of the World Top Trumps for her stocking.

Would this type of thing be any good? Not a game/puzzle so maybe too boring for a present. We have something similar in our house and the DC and their friends love it plus we have all learned loads about geography. We make up lots of games based around it and it looks great on the wall.

doradoo - Any tips for playing Mapominoes?! I really want to love it but we just can't get our heads round it. I think we're not playing it correctly but find the rules difficult to follow. I kind of expected the finished Mapominoes map to be representative of the actual map of Europe but we end up with countries here, there and everywhere!

Mapominoes is really hard to play if you want a proper map, we try to play it to make our DC really think hard about where things go and what that might mean for following turns, it's been really hard for DS1 to get his head round if Germany is placed on the wrong side of France for example.

I think it's something you probably need to persevere with, and perhaps tweak the rules to suit your players, ending up with an accurate map isn't going to happen, but making you look and see where soul tries sit relative to their neighbors is what the game is more about.

We have a jigsaw exactly as you describe - it’s a Jigraphy one from Happy Puzzle but they don’t seem to do it any more though they have some world and UK ones - and a European football one if she’s into football (DS has the UK football one). Happy Puzzle also have an Explore the World game which I would recommend (half price at moment) and Discover the World which we haven’t tried.

I also second the Maponimoes suggestion for understanding which countries are close to each other - there’s lots of different versions, we have Europe one.

We also have Who Knows Where which is good but might be too hard for her if her geography is rubbish!

Can you tell we like geography games?! Have you come across Sporcle, the online quiz site? Playing the Countries of the World quiz (name all 197 countries in 15 mins) is what set DS off on a love of geography games and there’s loads of different quizzes on there re geography, eg flags, capitals, countries on maps, countries with feature X, ...

The On the map game from Oaka Books is quite expensive but really good at improving country/city knowledge you can buy it here

We like Who Knows Where and have had loads of puzzles from the Happy Puzzle company over the years. Also various Top Trump games. We also like Stack the Countries on a phone.

Thanks so much for all the suggestions

applepinkierainbow - I really like the look of the On The Map game - think I'll be getting that.

And AliMonkey - we do do Sporcle quizzes but DD tends to focus on Marvel rather than anything more educational!

These geopuzzles are good:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/GeoToys-GEO-106-Geopuzzle-Puzzle/dp/B003F1E7K0]

Thanks, doradoo!

With Sporcle are you using it on laptop or phone/tablet? App or website? I've looked at the app but am wary of in-app purchase costs and the website isn't great on a phone.

Sporcle is on a laptop

I'm not sure whether this has capital cities, but for learning where European countries are, their relative size and general knowledge, the board game 'Where is Moldova' is very good.

Robert Dyas has 3D world map jigsaws And I thought they looked really good. Not sure on price but looking at keeping it as an option for birthday present.

Another vote for the Ticket to Ride game.