Adventure, culture, and celebration. 

I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since I posted about Social Media Madness and our nice friends at OPMOM.  As I’m sure you know, we’re all about fun the fancy way at Playnormous Health Games, and OPMOM has just gotten fancier.  They have completely updated their site with a new website look and feel that says “we’ve got class” to The OPMOM Creed. I asked our friend Carrie Pacini, founder of this social networking site for moms, to describe the difference between the OPMOM of old and today’s OPMOM.  Here’s what she said:

“Before [OPMOM] was geared more as a mommy social network. We didn’t want to get into diapers, baby food, and a mom’s daily routine because there are a TON of sites that do that. SO we want to focus on the fun things in life and create content around culture, food, celebrations, and adventures. We want to focus on motivating moms to BRING culture back to families because we feel that most American Households have lost culture or really don’t take pride in their roots and their Traditions. AND if families don’t have them then we want to encourage them to start them or at least expose their children to the rest of the world that is out there!”

In summary, if you’re a mom and want to share your favorite holiday traditions, learn how to host a super sophisticated party, or  travel in style, visit our friends at their freshly re-launched site http://www.OPMOM.com.  Congrats to the OPMOM team!

Games for all.

I stumbled upon a site today that lists the 50 Best Video Games for Senior Health.  Quite an interesting piece.  Most of the games they listed I expected, but there were a few surprises:

• Brain Games (ex: Brain Age)
• Wii Games (ex: Wii Golf)
• Physical Games (ex: DDR)
• Hand-Eye Coordination (ex: Tetris)
• Flying and Driving (ex: Gran Turismo)
• Online and Community Games (ex: AARP.org Games)
  

  

Surprise!  I didn’t realize that AARP Online Games even existed.  I shouldn’t have been that surprised considering more and more seniors are playing games these days.  There’s even a site called Grandparent Games.  Who knew!?

Now I can’t endorse any of these genres for bettering senior health.  This is especially true when it comes to brain games.  For example, this recent study concluded that Nintendo brain games don’t improve brain function any better than a normal quiz.  Interesting.  However, this is a perfect time to introduce our first senior monster, featured Playnormous monster #9.  He’s hip to be square and another one of my personal favorites.

Somethin’ smells fishy.

This is one of my favorite monsters, and he’s just so cute in his little fish bowl.  I hope that he makes it into one of our Playnormous health games at some point.  He would have been a perfect fit in our underwater exercise game Bubble Trouble, but I’m afraid he didn’t make the cut.  Maybe next time little guy!

Monday, Monday, so good to me.

I have several monster profiles left so I decided that Monday would be our Featured Monster day. After all, most people feel like a monster on Mondays, right?  Monster #7 is especially appropriate to start off Monster Mondays since he’s a little gloomy himself.  Find this monster on the Playnormous Health Games homepage animation where you can light him up by clicking on him.

Celebrating terrific teachers.

Are you a teacher in the United States using Playnormous in your classroom?  We want to say “thank you” by sending you a free Playnormous t-shirt!  Shirt decals come in five colors in adult and child sizes.  Wear ‘em proud on casual Friday or use it as a prize for the best Playnormous student.  Check the Teacher Guide page for further details within the next few days!

Other Monster’s Blog posts for teachers.

Want to know more about using Playnormous health games in the classroom?  See these additional Monster’s Blog posts, perfect for teachers.

• Free Media Education Toolkit for Teachers
• Playnormous Now on School-Approved Kids.gov
• Playnormous Officially Out of Beta with Teacher Guides
• Playnormous Rocks the School
• Are You in the Playnormous Top 10?