Pen & Pixel Studios Releases Grammatical Nonsense: A World's First for Literacy & Speech Games

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 6, 2021 (Newswire.com) - This week, Pen & Pixel Studios releases the world's first universally designed storytelling card game, Grammatical Nonsense, on Indiegogo. Designed for special education, literacy, ESL, speech-language pathology, and classroom and casual play, the game is wildly engaging, multimodal, and carefully crafted to build confidence while supporting speech and language skills in children who face everyday challenges with attention, executive functioning, working memory, and more. 

Created independently by writer, designer, and narrative psychology researcher Daniel Kessler, the game includes dozens of hidden features and uses color-coding, pattern recognition, signaling, and much more to work subconsciously while children build their own distinctive narrative worlds. The game also supports structured learning through common core vocabulary, emotion regulation words, and 19 ready-made classroom, speech, and casual storytelling exercises.

Like Scrabble pieces, these modular cards can be used in infinite ways to suit players' particular needs; a myriad of special subject booster packs, tabletop storyboards, and other add-ons are also available to inspire, engage, and enlighten, while allowing players to take ownership of their own stories by building their own decks for an even more personalized experience.

The inspiration for Grammatical Nonsense came from Daniels' early childhood, which he spent overcoming a speech delay, stammer, stutter, word-finding problems, and short-term memory impairment, spending many of his elementary school recesses in speech therapy. He didn't want other children to struggle the way he did to find their voice, so he universally designed this uniquely wacky and endearing game to target working memory, executive functioning, attention, and pragmatics, all while building confidence and lowering barriers to social and educational participation.

During the Indiegogo campaign (running through June 15), every $25 raised above the target goal will result in a free deck for a high-need school, literacy specialist, or student. If the game reaches its stretch goals, the designer will be able to release braille and multi-language decks for even greater accessibility. 

The campaign currently offers several booster pack add-ons including a Math Pack, Punctuation Pack, Prefix-Suffix Pack, and Speech-Language Pathology Pack, with other subject packs planned in the coming months to include a Prehistory Pack, Climate Science Pack, and more. 

Decks are planned to ship in time for summer break. To order your own, or to support this project and help bring it to the kids who need it most, visit the Indiegogo campaign before June 15, or share this resource on social media.

For more information, contact Daniel Kessler at [email protected] or visit his studio page at www.penandpixelstudios.com.

Source: Pen & Pixel Studios