Have you heard about Mystery Animal with Google yet?

I came across this really cool website when I was doing animal research with my students.   After spending an evening with my husband playing Mystery Animal, I decided to try it out with my 3^rd – 5^th graders.  I’m so glad I did, because it was a HUGE HIT!  Sadly, it’ not longer active but here’s how you played:

First you clicked on the “Preview it here” button to load the first mystery animal.  Then, using either Google Home or the microphone on your computer, you would press the microphone icon and ask a Yes or No question.  You were given 20 chances to guess the correct answer, and Google will let you know after each question if that answer is correct or not. At times, it will also give clues as to additional questions you could ask.

When I did this with my 3rd graders, I knew they might need to review the different classifications of animals in order to help them ask questions that would help narrow down the field.  (In fact, even my 5th graders said they wanted to watch it too!) So I showed them this short video before we played.

Then, I had them get into partner groups of 2 or 3 students, and I numbered them off 1 through 8 (or however many groups you have.)  I made a t-chart on the whiteboard and labeled one side “YES” and the other side “NO”.  I wrote down the answers in either the “Yes” or “No” column after they asked their questions.  This helped them keep track of what they knew as the game was played.  I also had each partner group have a laptop with our databases open, so they could use them to help figure things out.  Plus, this gave them more practice using our databases, which is always a plus!

Oh my gosh!  It was so much fun watching them shout out questions to help the group that was up to ask the question…there was so much collaboration, problem-solving, and communication as they worked together.  What I loved most was that even though they were in small groups, the entire class was working together to try and figure it out!  After the first game, they all wanted to do it again so they could try to beat their score!  At the time of typing this blog post, my top score was from one of my 3rd grade groups who were able to figure out the animal in only 6 guesses!

This weekend, I was telling my husband how much fun the kids had, that I thought it might be fun for the kids to create their own “Mystery Animal Guessing Game”.   I wanted something that they could very quickly check off facts about their animal, and be able to use that checklist to easily answer their partner’s Yes or No questions.  Here’s what I came up with.

Here’s how you play:

1. Copy the two pages double sided on white paper.
2. Hand out a copy for each student, and have them use books and/or databases to research an animal.  Have them check the boxes for each fact about their animal.
3. When they are finished, have them get together with a partner and ask yes or no questions to try and guess each other’s animal correctly.

If you’d like to try this out with your kids too, you can find it on my website here or at my TpT store.  If you play it with your own kids, I’d love to hear how it goes!