Age of Exploration Jeopardy

Explorers, voyages, compasses, and the Columbian Exchange: an Age of Exploration review for middle grades. Copy the board free and buzz in on phones.

6 categories · 30 clues · Final Jeopardy · everyone buzzes in from their phone

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Why Explore

$200
Explorers' motives are often summed up as the three Gs: gold, glory and this.
What is God?
$400
Europeans paid high prices for these Asian flavorings, like pepper, cinnamon and cloves.
What are spices?
$600
European rulers paid for voyages hoping to gain these, lands overseas that they could rule and profit from.
What are colonies?
$800
Europeans looked for a sea route to Asia partly because this empire captured Constantinople in 1453.
What is the Ottoman Empire?
$1,000
This economic idea said a nation grows rich by exporting more than it imports and piling up gold and silver.
What is mercantilism?

Ships and Navigation

$200
This tool with a magnetic needle helped sailors find north.
What is a compass?
$400
Developed by the Portuguese, this small, fast, easy-to-steer ship carried many explorers down the coast of Africa.
What is a caravel?
$600
Sailors used this instrument to measure the height of the Sun or stars and find their latitude.
What is an astrolabe?
$800
These triangular sails let ships sail at an angle into the wind.
What are lateen sails?
$1,000
With no reliable way to measure this east-west position at sea, sailors often had to estimate it.
What is longitude?

Portugal and Spain

$200
This Italian sailed west for Spain in 1492, hoping to reach Asia.
Who was Christopher Columbus?
$400
This Portuguese prince paid for voyages down the coast of Africa, though he rarely sailed himself.
Who was Prince Henry the Navigator?
$600
This Portuguese captain sailed around the southern tip of Africa in 1488.
Who was Bartolomeu Dias?
$800
This Spanish conquistador brought down the Aztec Empire in 1521.
Who was Hernán Cortés?
$1,000
This 1494 treaty drew a line dividing newly found lands between Spain and Portugal.
What is the Treaty of Tordesillas?

France and England

$200
Sailing for England, this Italian reached the coast of North America in 1497.
Who was John Cabot?
$400
This Frenchman explored the St. Lawrence River in the 1530s and claimed the land for France.
Who was Jacques Cartier?
$600
Called the Father of New France, this explorer founded Quebec in 1608.
Who was Samuel de Champlain?
$800
Searching for the Northwest Passage, this English explorer gave his name to a river in New York and a bay in Canada.
Who was Henry Hudson?
$1,000
This English sea captain sailed around the world from 1577 to 1580, raiding Spanish ships along the way.
Who was Sir Francis Drake?

Famous Voyages

$200
The Niña, the Pinta and this ship sailed west across the Atlantic together in 1492.
What is the Santa María?
$400
In 1498, this Portuguese explorer became the first European to reach India by sailing around Africa.
Who was Vasco da Gama?
$600
This Italian navigator argued that the lands across the Atlantic were a new world, and two continents bear his name.
Who was Amerigo Vespucci?
$800
In 1513, this Spaniard crossed Panama and became the first European to see the Pacific from the Americas.
Who was Vasco Núñez de Balboa?
$1,000
Legend says this Spanish explorer was searching for the Fountain of Youth when he reached Florida in 1513.
Who was Juan Ponce de León?

The Columbian Exchange

$200
This crop from the Americas became so important in Ireland that a blight on it caused a famine.
What is the potato?
$400
Europeans brought these animals to the Americas, and they changed how Plains peoples hunted and traveled.
What are horses?
$600
This red fruit from the Americas became a key ingredient in Italian sauces.
What is the tomato?
$800
This disease from Europe killed millions of Native Americans, who had no immunity to it.
What is smallpox?
$1,000
Chocolate comes from the seeds of this plant, first grown in the Americas.
What is cacao?

Final Jeopardy — Around the World

His expedition was the first to sail all the way around the world, though he was killed in the Philippines before the voyage ended.

Who was Ferdinand Magellan?

How to run this board

This board covers why Europeans set out across the oceans and what happened when they did: the motives of gold, glory, and trade, the ships and navigation tools that made long voyages possible, the Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English explorers, and the Columbian Exchange that moved plants, animals, and diseases between hemispheres.

Matching explorers to sponsor countries is where students trip most, so hang a world map and let the team that answers pin a sticky note on the route. By the end of the game the map shows who went where.

The Columbian Exchange column rewards discussion. After each clue, ask which direction the item traveled, east or west, before you move on.

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