Playing with Kids: Inserting Languages and Mathematics in

A short post today....

I have two ideas for inserting education into playing D&D with kids:

For savings throws, instead of rolling a save in the conventional way, roll two dice to generate a math problem. The dice you roll are arbitrary, probably based on grade level or math ability somehow, but the idea is you present the two values as the arguments for a mathematical operation (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, and so on). The player has so many seconds to do it, possibly with a pencil and paper, or possibly only via mental math. If they get it correct, they proceed.
For casting spells, they have to translate a sentence from their native language to a non-native language, speak it into google translate, and have it return their original native language sentence.
A variation on 2: to execute a scroll, have them read something in the non-native language in question to google translate, and see if the correct native language word comes out.

This is above and beyond just throwing puzzles of some sort into their exploration.

What ideas do you have? What have you tried to do with kids, and how did it go?

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