*  "Swamped in the Glades! an Everglades Watershed Adventure" is a card-driven educational board game geared towards fourth and fifth graders, but challenging for older grades and adults as well.

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*  To play the game, players "become" a drop of water traveling through the Everglades. They start out at the top of the board in Lake Okeechobee, and the mission is to make it to the Gulf of Mexico, at the bottom of the board.

In order to reach the Gulf of Mexico, they must first pass through six different ecosystems, experiencing in each ecosystem everything that might happen to a drop of water in that ecosystem.   The game gives the kids an intimate understanding of what it means to be a drop of water in the Everglades - what makes water flow, or not flow, how water is used, and in what ways it is threatened.

 

*  Players begin by drawing cards from a "Lake Okeechobee" deck of cards, which give different scenarios that involve water and how water moves, in the Lake. The cards will tell players to move forward into the Sawgrass Prairie, to travel to another ecosystem, or they may get diverted to a city or the sugar cane fields. Players will follow directions on the cards, moving from ecosystem to ecosystem.  When they enter a new ecosystem, they collect a token from that ecosystem, and on their next turn, draw cards from the corresponding ecosystem. Players must have collected tokens from all six ecosystems in order to win. Players may land on a "question" space, where they will have to draw a "question card" and answer a question. If they answer four question cards correctly, they can trade the cards in and jump to an ecosystem of their choice.

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*  The 60 question cards feature relevant and grade-level appropriate vocabulary. The game highlights over 100 native species of plants and animals through illustrations or scenarios written on the cards.