With our middle school volleyball season ending soon, I wanted to strike while the creative iron was hot. Unfortunately, putting up the volleyball poles and net can be a pain. I probably will not pull them out again until it is time for middle school boys' volleyball in the spring. So what could I do that is volleyball themed and could teach a cool concept from the classroom? I got an idea when I drove past a spooky "haunted house" in our neighborhood. They put extra big black curtains with holes outside their windows. When the wind was blowing just right, the curtains would billow in the wind, giving the house an ominous look. It made the house look extra dark because you could not see inside. This became the inspiration for my next game called:
Dark Matter!
Thousands of years ago, early humans probably wondered what the wind was. You cannot see the wind; it is invisible. However, you can feel it blow by or hear it rush past your ear. You can see how it affects other things, like a leaf blowing through the air or a powerful tornado causing damage. Not as long ago, we pondered the mysteries of gravity. Similar to the wind, it cannot be seen. What we could clearly see was how gravity influenced everything on Earth. Observing how gravity interacted with other things is how we understood gravity in the first place.
A similar thing is happening with a concept called Dark Matter. We can calculate the mass of the universe. However, there is much more mass than we can "see." We call this unknown mass dark matter because it does not interact with the electromagnetic spectrum, which makes our ability to measure it very difficult. However, we can see its influence on the different cosmic phenomena. This helps us understand it better even though we cannot see or measure it directly.
This game takes the popular game Newcomb and adds a feature of "blinding" the other team or making them “dark.” This game will act as an impressionistic metaphor for the students to understand how we can infer when we cannot directly see it. This game can be found in the Free Resources Section, which features lots of other free lesson downloads too! If you like what you see, you can purchase many more in the website store! Each volume has over 30 lessons containing detailed instructions and diagrams. Inflation has been challenging for everyone, so I decided to reduce the price of each volume to only $19. These lessons are perfect for the classroom teacher who has to do it all (including PE) and the PE teacher new to Montessori. They also work for PE teachers in the traditional setting, looking for something new and different. So for $19, go ahead and (trick or) treat yourself!