Let Us Help You Set Up a Gaming Club!

 

We are excited to offer schools in the HRM help in setting up school clubs focused around gaming! (If you’re within an hour drive from Halifax we can make it work!)

Over the past number of years we have offered kids and teens summer activities, kids after school clubs, and birthday parties for Pokemon, Lorcana and Dungeons and Dragons, and now we want to help schools set up gaming clubs too!

Why a gaming club you ask?  The types of clubs we want to help you set up all encourage in person, face to face gaming!  They are strategic, involve math, teamwork and critical thinking.  

So what games are we talking about?

Pokemon  

Pokemon is a fantastic game that offers a wide range of game play, tactics, and strategies. Teaching the skills of “how do we determine an item's value?”, “what’s a fair trade?”, “why is a fair trade important?” and many more are all key life skills that we believe kids will learn through Pokemon. While Pokemon can cause challenges in schools, we have found that the lack of education behind etiquette, trading rules, and fair evaluations is at the heart of the issues and can be a valuable teaching moment.  We have helped schools set up Pokemon Clubs in the past with great success.  

Dungeons and Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is a fantastic game for kids as it encourages creativity and uses the theatre of the mind to foster social interaction.  Unlike other games which are adversarial by nature, with a winner/loser dynamic, D&D is a cooperative experience where players work together to shape a communal narrative. The Game Master (GM) creates a story filled with plot hooks, characters, problems, and dangers.  The Players create a character with their own unique set of skills and personality.  They then work together to interact with the story and world the GM created, changing and crafting the story as they play.  It uses acting, improv, creative writing, problem solving, and cooperation.  

Lorcana 

In Lorcana, players get to summon Disney characters to help them gain enough Lore to win the game.  Players can build decks based on their favourite characters, movies, or game mechanics.  It is a simple game to learn with a lot of different cards and mechanics meaning it always presents a new thing to try.  It is a game that uses math, reading, critical thinking, planning ahead, and good sportsmanship.  Designing decks also brings a new puzzle to the game as figuring out what you like to play and how to best put that deck together is an ever changing challenge.  Speaking from experience, a deck is never done.  As soon as I finish building a deck to play I almost always see something else I want to try.  This is a great exercise in designing something within given parameters and mechanics as you want a deck to work and be fun. It’s a science experiment - you design a deck based on a hypothesis of how it will play, then test to see if it works as expected.  You then change whatever did not work and repeat the process.

What We’re Offering

  • Starting Supplies for 20 Students (Additional Supplies available as needed, just ask!)

    • D&D: Books and Dice

    • Lorcana: Decks, Booster Packs, and Dice

    • Pokemon: Decks, Booster Packs and Dice

  • An Expert to Facilitate the first Month of Gaming Club

    • I play these games obsessively and am very passionate about them.  I have over two decades of experience working with kids of all ages, and I’ll be there to help everyone learn how to play these games 🙂

  • Ongoing Support

    • Refresher workshops

    • Workshops for new players

    • Prizes 

    • New books, dice, decks, etc

    • Onboarding new club organizers

    • Start up sessions for the new school year 

What do you need to get started?  

You will need someone to run the club - and don’t worry if they are not experts in the game.  We are happy to teach the teachers as much as they want/need to know to run the club!

What do we need from you?  

Just say yes!  This is all free of charge to the school!  We love these games and want to teach them to everyone who wants to learn.  

Not a Principal or Teacher Yourself?

No big deal! If you think this is something your school or your child or teen’s school would like, let us know! We will reach out to them!