Oregon Trail dice game

October 14, 2022

I like when projects can hit several different subject areas. In this instance we’re going to hit History and writing with this Oregon Trail dice game, and bonus it’s a game! Kids always love to learn more when it’s a game! So this is going to hit a history lesson, some gameschooling, and a writing lesson (I need to make a landing page for that).

Oregon Trail Dice Game US history gameschooling

(there are affiliate links in here)

Oregon Trail Dice game supplies

Oregon Trail Dice game, dice, pencil (I buy giant stacks of them at the beginning of the school year)

Setting up to play the Oregon Trail Dice Game

Obviously, I use this at home with my kinds in their homeschool, but I got the original idea of history dice games from a public school teacher (she was selling them on Teachers Pay Teachers, but they’re no longer sold there).

Print off all of the various different locations.

When we play this at home, I pretty much spread them out around our dining room table, admittedly that’s because I’m using this with my giant teens.

If I was doing this with them back when they were in elementary school I would totally tape them up to the wall all over the downstairs.

You know, burn that energy kids, tire yourselves out as you go from place to place.

Let’s talk dice

I’ve gone back and forth on whether you should have one die per location, or just give each kid their own die to carry around.

I’m kinda leaning towards carrying their own die. They can carry their record sheet, a die, and pencil, and have all they need.

Before we get to playing the game

Oregon Trail Unit us history modern westward expansion north america

I have an entire Oregon Trail unit with resources, hands-on history lessons, and more, that you should go check out.

Let’s start playing the game!

using the printable Oregon Trail dice game

Everyone starts out Back Home. Notice that most of the time you stay AT HOME. That’s because it took a lot of work to head off.

It always amuses me to see how the travels end up, everyone has different results, and some people at the end of 20 tries still haven’t made it to Oregon.

Others made it quickly and were there for a good amount of time, in this virtual game, and ended up heading back for some reason. Like my person headed back traveled around a little bit, went back to Oregon and ended up never really making it to Oregon.

That’s the fun part for me.

Turning the Oregon Trail Dice game into a writing assignment

I love to see what kids come up with for their writing assignments. There’s a rubric in the printable showing what gets a good grade, so it’s literally did they get all of these criteria? Yes or No.

You still get some hilarious stories out of it.

Think about what happened when you played the Oregon Trail game growing up. Someone had to die of dysentery. So when it says “Someone’s sick ON THE TRAIL,” you could say they have dysentery.

Okay, maybe that joke is only funny to me.

All in all, a great way to spend an hour or so playing and reviewing history.

You certainly have a higher chance of making it to Oregon in the dice game than you do in the card game…