Discover Muslim inventors

1. Tell everyone that you’re going to play some games to learn about Muslim inventors and what they invented.  The Golden Age of Islam from the 8th to 14th centuries, was a time of great discovery and invention and saw an explosion of ideas, inventions and learning. Baghdad especially became the centre for science, maths and more. The Abbasid caliphs (leaders) wanted people to learn. The city had libraries, universities, hospitals, schools and the famous House of Wisdom. The House of Wisdom was a huge academy where people studied.
2. Ask everyone to get into teams.
3. Give each team a copy of the picture cards, but make sure they don’t have any copies of the text.
4. A volunteer should choose one of the text cards and read each fact one by one, pausing after each one. When a team knows what the invention might be, they should put their hands up or signal to the volunteer. The team who put their hands up the fastest should then be chosen to say what they think it is. 
5. If they’re correct, they get a point, and you move onto the next card. If they’re incorrect, they could lose a point or they could be out for the rest of that round. You could also just continue to read the card and wait for a team to guess again until someone’s correct. 
6. If a team guesses and is correct, finishing reading out each card, so everyone can learn the facts about each invention.
7. At the end, whichever team has the most points wins. 

Guess the invention

1. Now everyone’s more familiar with the inventions, give each team a copy of the pictures and the text. If they want to people can read the cards to remind them of the inventions and the inventors. Each team member must pick one of the inventions, then write it on a sticky note. They should then gently put it on someone else’s forehead, so everyone can see it. Make sure no-one see’s what invention they’ve been given.
2. Next, move all the picture cards outside of the circle or group, so no-one can see them. 
3. Going round in a circle, each person can then ask ‘yes or no’ questions about the invention to try and guess what they are. People can only ask one question at a time
4. The group can use the Muslim inventors and invention cards to help them answer the question if they’re unsure. Remind people not to make it obvious which sheet they’re looking at for the answer.
5. The first person to guess correctly wins but keep going until everyone’s guessed theirs. 
6. Once an invention has been guessed, the group could read out their facts on the information sheet to remind them.