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Playing to Learn

Retired teacher creates games for kids to develop skills while having fun

IMG_4584Lucille Lucy’s educational game business started with sugar packets. She would use the packets on restaurant tables to keep her children entertained, but it was also helping them learn math. She would ask them to count the packets or to put the colors in a sequence. Blue, pink, pink, blue, etc.—the basic math skill of identifying and creating patterns.

The stay-at-home mom had been working in early elementary education in New Jersey before she took time off to raise her kids. She had created a number of games that were simple and portable. There was another math game with numerals pasted onto posterboard, cut to the size of playing cards, that her son, Michael, especially liked playing. “The deck would have numbers in order, but I’d leave some out,” Lucy says. The challenge would be to figure out which numbers were missing.

When her children were old enough to go to school, Lucy returned to teaching. Some things, however, had changed in the six years she’d been gone.

“It was 1978, and I realized that learning disabilities were starting to be recognized more.” She discovered that the games seemed to help those who, as Lucy says, “learned a different way.” Her creative inventions took on even more importance in her teaching and her tutoring, and so did her interest in working with students with developmental disabilities. She pursued a master’s degree and earned consultant certifications to work with special-needs children.

When she retired in 2005, she continued tutoring, and the games remained invaluable. There were card games to teach addition, subtraction and multiplication, and others that helped with word recognition for reading. She reconfigured dice, painting over the numbers to create sequences that helped teach children how to count money. “They were learning simply by having fun playing a game,” Lucy says.

That same year, she began considering seriously how to construct her homemade games and make them a bit more sophisticated—and more available. She began her company, Play ’n Learn Games.

Now 73, retired and living in Wynmoor Village in Coconut Creek, Lucy still tutors—mostly to the children of family and friends—and she continues to create games, 50 to date.

Two of the most popular, currently sold online, are playing-card games. ABC Dig for Gold is for letter recognition, which improves reading skills, while Challenge uses counting cards to teach math. She also has four board games in early production. All of the games are created for ages 3 and up, and she would like to get them into schools. “They follow an academic sequence, so they could fit into any curriculum,” she says, adding that they work for homeschooling.

One golden rule in her games has nothing to do with academics. It’s Play ’n Learn’s motto: “Play, Praise, Learn, Have Fun.”

“ ‘Praise’ is the important word there,” she says. “On our game directions, we say, ‘Praise the players.’ This is the perfect opportunity for parents to build their children’s self esteem and confidence—tell them, ‘Way to go! Great job!’ ”

For information about Lucy’s games, visit playnlearngames.com.

School Days
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The National Council on Teacher Quality named Broward County Public Schools a Great District for Great Teachers, a recognition that denotes districts with policies and practices that support teachers. The district is one of eight national districts honored after being evaluated on teacher surveys, district leadership interviews and policy and program analysis.

Pamela Griffin, fitness/wellness department chair at Monarch High School, was recently selected as a finalist for Broward County Public Schools Teacher of the Year.

Coconut Creek became a “Broward Reads” city, joining Parkland, Hollywood, Coral Springs and others in the campaign for grade-level reading. The national campaign seeks to increase the number of children who read at grade level by the completion of third grade. To learn more, visit cscbroward.org/browardreads.

The Broward Chapter of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association awarded Atlantic Technical College and Technical High School the 2017 ProStart School of the Year Award. The ProStart curriculum is a part of ATC’s commercial foods and culinary arts program. The FRLA also awarded scholarships to 10 ATC students, including seniors Mhina John-Baptiste and Amanda Gonzalez, who received $2,000 to attend colleges with a hospitality management program.

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