10 Days in Europe board game

As I was putting together my hands on geography unit for our homeschool geography I knew I wanted a few games, and 10 Days In Europe Board Game*
fits that bill perfectly.

(This post contains affiliate links marked with an *)

How to play 10 Days in Europe

In “10 Days in Europe” you are traveling across Europe in 10 days (simple isn’t it?).  To start off each player draws 10 country cards and puts them into their trays in the order they draw them.

 

Then the first player (however you choose them) can either draw a new country from the discard pile or the draw pile OR they can choose to switch location of two of their countries.

Play continues around until someone can walk from country to country with all 10 of their cards.

In play style this rather reminds me of Gin Rummy, as it’s a “draw one, discard one” game.

There are a few special cards that function somewhat like wild cards, planes or boats, these are specified in the rules exactly how they work, but having one of those can make your game significantly easier.

 

Modifications to make 10 Days in Europe easier

I’m using 10 Days in Europe to help my kids learn European geography, it’s a fun game in its own right, but it’s purpose in my house is to learn geography.

 

• Only play for “5 Days in Europe,” which makes the game shorter and less frustrating when you are first learning the geography.  But can in many ways be a harder game, as I learned when we tried the 10 day trip.
• Play with open hands.  This lets you give each other advice on how to plan your trip.
• Allow the plane cards to work from any country to any country instead of to specific colors.
• Allow kids to organize their countries as they initially get them.

The first time we played we used the “5 Days in Europe” and the open hand modifications and that seemed sufficient for my family, but I could see the other two ideas working for families that aren’t as used to board games as we are.  When we played again once the kids had an idea of how it worked, we didn’t use any modifications at all.

 

Why 10 Days in Europe is a great geography game

First you’re learning geography in a fun way.  It’s not flash cards, or map drills, it’s natural you learn it more as you play the game more.

Next, you’re learning which country is neighboring which.  When you learn countries with flash cards, you don’t get to learn the countries next to it, unless that is part of the memorization drill.

You’re learning general placement.  My kids are learning which countries are Eastern Europe and which are Western Europe, so when we cover Mystery of History 4 next year it will be more easily understood why history happened in that way.

 

Will we get the rest of the 10 Days games?

In a heartbeat yes we will, except for 10 Days in America because we already have a great geography game for United States, Destination USA.  I will probably order them from RainbowResource.com, because last I checked their prices are half of Amazon (so here’s the link to 10 Days in Europe for them, for those of you not in the USA Amazon might be the better price).

 

For more great learning games check out my Games pinterest board.