Number of Players: 4 to 8
Grade Levels: Elementary and Up
Length: 20 Minutes

NYS Standards:

ELA Standard 1: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for information and understanding.

ELA Standard 4: Students will read, write, listen, and speak for social interaction.

AASL Standards:

1.2.6 Display emotional resilience by persisting in information searching despite challenges

2.1.2 Organize knowledge so it is useful

4.1.5 Connect ideas to own interests and previous knowledge and experience

Imagine if you will, a blender… filled with gleeful, pixie-stick Ritalin monkeys, a farmyard See ‘n Say, and the kid from the front row who always said: “Oooo Oooo”. If you can, then you have the flavor of Out of the Box Publishing‘s jubilant cacophony of barnyard fun, Snorta!

Snorta! is an infectiously fun memory game that cleverly reuses the familiar “War” card game mechanic. Each player receives a barnyard animal and a barn in which to hide said animal. Before the players place their animal in the barn, they take turns showing them to the everyone. Once the critters are away in the barns, players are dealt cards. The cards feature pictures of the barnyard animals that are used in the game. This little details serves to complicate things for all involved.

The goal of the game is to be the first player to get rid of all your cards. To do so, players take turns laying down cards one at a time, going around in a circle. If at anytime, players have matching cards, they need to try to make the sound of the animal that is hidden in the other person’s barn. The person who correctly remembers and makes the animal noise first, gives all of their cards to the other player.

Remembering 7 or 8 different farm animals is challenging enough. Now add in the fact that you are looking at farm animals on the cards as well. So, for example… player A and B have matching cow cards showing on the table in front of them. Player A instinctively makes a “moooooo” sound because of the cow cards on the table, while player B remembers that there is a rooster in player A’s barn and yells out “cock-a-doodle-doo”. The game play that results is a medley of varying animal noises as players desperately try to match the right noise to the right player.

Verdict: This game works! It works even better when you have a full 8 players on board. We recently had a games workshop for the other staff in our building to showcase some of the games that we have been collecting for our game library. We had a Wii, Guitar Hero and Snorta! set up. Snorta! won hands down. The wee Wii controllers and the pseudo-Strat controller sat abandoned as everyone played several rounds of this game.

School Library Connection: So how does Snorta! fit in as part of a game library in schools? Snorta! is an exercise in information organization. This is a foundational skill for studying, note taking, writing and many other core educational activites. There are few tools out there that help students to practice organizing information for quick and easy recall and I can guarantee you that NONE of them are this much fun!

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