The Terrible, Horrible, No Good Game was created by students at Park Avenue Memorial Elementary School, inspired by a book read in their music class, “The Really Awful Musicians.”

The activity supported the district’s Skin in the Game initiative and included a technology component as students used the school’s 3D printer to make the game pieces. Students made board games based upon the book, which is about the royal musicians during the Medieval time period.

Music teacher Megan Ashe said that creation of the games served as a culminating activity for the year, as it had to feature different musical concepts students learned such as rhythms, note values and the EGBDF and FACE note staffs. Each game had to be designed following the format of other popular board or card games, and represent all of the characters from the books and the instruments they used.

Fifth graders from Amy Stein’s class were selected to create moveable game pieces using the MakerBot 3D printer, located in the library. Students used the Tinkercad program to design the pieces. Ms. Ashe explained that every five game pieces took about 45 minutes to print.  

Student Cesia Guevara said it was exciting that she and her classmates were among the first in the school to use the 3D printer. As someone who avidly plays board games at home, she explained that it was also a great experience to learn about the work that goes into creating a game. Marvin Barnes added that it was fun to work together as a group, to help build their teamwork skills.