Ravensburger Labyrinth

It's Sunday and POURING outside. My husband has gone in to work for a couple of hours and I'm sitting here thinking about Ravensburger's Labyrinth.

We picked up this game at an estate tag sale yesterday for $1.50.  It's a really simple concept.  There are a series of tiles on a game board that make up a labyrinth.  Some tiles are fixed to the board.  You are given cards with images of different magical objects that match the images on the tiles.  Your objective is to collect the items on the card by following the maze and you do that by taking the one extra tile and using it to push a row of tiles and thereby change the maze to advance your piece.  Confusing?  Yes.  Let me cut and paste the official directions just in case. . . .

The game board has a set of tiles fixed solidly onto it; the remaining tiles that make up the labyrinth slide in and out of the rows created by the tiles that are locked in place. One tile always remains outside the labyrinth, and players take turns taking this extra tile and sliding it into a row of the labyrinth, moving all those tiles and pushing one out the other side of the board; this newly removed tile becomes the piece for the next player to add to the maze.

Players move around the shifting paths of the labyrinth in a race to collect various treasures. Whoever collects all of his treasures first and returns to his home space wins!

We played it last night and I was fascinated by how simplistic it was.  There was no reading involved, just pictures.  Of course, being a music teacher, I thought how cool it would be to have a musical version of this. What if there were musical symbols or notes on a staff that the students would have to find in the maze instead of the pictures?  The problem with that, sadly enough, is that music is written in black and white.  While it can sound wonderful, it doesn't look as cool on a game board.  Well, that lead to considering instruments and instrument families, but I already have a game that I've altered with musical instruments and I haven't even used it once this year.  (Why haven't I used it?  It looks like fun!)  So on and on the thought process went until I landed on using the items on the maze in a song.  Maybe there is a short, Sol Mi La song I can write that the kids could sing after they reach their item.  They would have to fit the name of the item into the song, teaching musical rhythms.  I would just have to come up with a song. . . .

The next problem I have is convincing my husband that one more cool thing we have from home needs to go to the classroom with me ;)