“Who is the 12th president, Mommy?”
“Millard Fillmore?”
{snickers…} “No Mommy, it’s Zachary Taylor.”
Nothing like getting drilled from the back seat while running errands. Even the four year old has memorized most of the presidents by face and can recognize their numbers in our little flip book that we keep in the car…
As the presidential election nears, we’ve been learning about our nations’ presidents. What better way to test our new-found knowledge of these presidents than with a game!
I’ll be honest up front and let you know that it isn’t perfect. After spending HOURS working on this, I printed it out the night before our cabin getaway and discovered up there that they were a bit too small. Thankfully, we were able to slip the cards under the prongs on one end which actually makes it easier to swap out as we mix and match the different presidents to make an always changing game board.
Because we aren’t total presidential trivia experts, I put together some information pages to aid in asking and answering questions. We did not allow questions on appearance, but focused on facts. Something along the lines of “Is your president a Republican?” is usually one of the first questions, followed by “Did he serve in the military?” or “Did he die in office?” or “Was he a vice-president first?” “Does he appear on a US coin or currency?”
It is nice having the answers handy!
We borrowed Guess Who from a friend and set up to play! We are hooked and need to now buy our own Guess Who? game!
Here is how we play it:
- Print President cards – 1 large set and 2 small sets. Laminating or using contact paper will help these last longer
- Cut out cards. We colored the back of one set to help keep the two sets differentiated. If I had thought about it, I would have printed this on scrapbooking paper that was white on one side…
- Print the info sheets (included with the download for the small set) for help with narrowing down the field.
- Select 24 presidents for each board and slide them into place. Gather 24 corresponding large cards.
- Each player selects a president.
- The questions begin.
- Must be a question that can be answered with a yes or no.
- No questions based on appearance as in the original “Guess Who” game.
- No guessing of presidents. Must narrow it down to one by asking questions based on what you know about that president.
- Be prepared to play over and over and over again!
{As a courtesy, please do not link directly to the download files. Feel free to pin or link to this tutorial if you want to recommend it.}
Ok, I’m off to bed. My poor little girl is trying to cut those first teeth and it’s been keeping her up at night…
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Thank you so much for creating and sharing this! I made a doc that can fit at the top of the new boards. I started with 1-24, so those are at the top. Then’s there a blank chart if you’d rather use different ones. You can access it at my blog, abundanthomemaking.com. The small president pictures you have here work perfectly cut out and taped over the animals or people on the new boards. Thanks again!
I LOVE this idea! I am always looking for fun ways to learn facts so we can retain them! Can’t wait to print out and play.
Thank you!! Super creative!!
You are a genius! THANK you for making this available for free!
This looks like a great learning tool.
Hi there! I’ve been using your game to promote a bit of citizenship into my ESL class!
Super awesome game! downloaded, cut, and laminated with contact paper and slid them into my edition of “Guess Who?” board. Bit of advice for those who are making their board: just cut out the pictures she has already sized, and you can put them on a separate paper that is cut to the size of your board. Mine fit in perfectly now, and with the added bulk of lamination, they don’t slip out on their own as easily.
Note to Miss Haupt: Maybe I missed it…please help! In your download of the larger Presidents, Our 38th President, Mr. Gerald Ford, appears to be A.W.O.L or M.I.A??? Whatever the case, he is not on your load. As for now, I will omit him from our board. I wasn’t sure if you were aware of this.
Thank you for taking the time to set this up and allowing us to load the game pieces!
Thanks for sharing your tips.
Yikes, I’m going to have to go take a look at that and fix the MIA president. Thanks for letting me know.
I was so excited this morning I printed, laminated, and cut out all the cards. But the cards are to small for my board. Just an FYI to check your board before going through all the cutting. I’ll reprint all the large cards and cut them to size. Still very excited!
We got it all set up and already played a game. It was refreshing to take more than 3 questions to figure it out. The information sheet was perfect, great adaptation to the game rules.
Good to know that there are different sizes of editions. Ours didn’t fit perfectly either. As you can see from the picture, I just slide them under the prongs on one side while leaving the original cards behind them. Will this work for your board? We actually found we liked this better because we could switch out presidents since we have more US presidents than we have slots on the Guess Who board.
Oh my gosh…these cards are amazing! I used to love Guess Who when I was a kid. Thanks so much for sharing!!!!!
Oh I love this. Please consider linking this up at “Look! What We Did!” Thanks, Savannah http://lookwhatwedid-homeschool.blogspot.com
I can see this would be fun to play. We need to know more about the presidents though to play this well. Are there any resources you would recommend to help? My boys would love to play – both under 10.
Great idea! I should do that with our Prime Ministers. Will I? Hmmm…that’s a question for another day. LOL! You do inspire my friend. Yes, you do! 🙂
Blessings,
Camille