(Photo by Tammy Sakry)
Kate (left) and brother Matt Frame are challenged to answer a Minnesota State history question by mom Cheri Frame. Matt and Cheri Frame developed Spotlight on Minnesota to make learning history fun.
Betty Crocker, an invented persona, is a famous brand name for this company?

A Ramsey mother and son team have created a way to make Minnesota history fun.

Cheri and Matt Frame’s Spotlight on Minnesota game has 120 questions to challenge beginners to experts on Minnesota history.

The game covers state history from Lewis and Clark’s expedition to roughly the 1950s and covers state features, geography, people, trade and state symbols, said son Matt Frame.

The game was conceived three years ago as a history lesson for homeschool students, said mom Cheri Frame.

As a volunteer teacher with the Partnership Homeschool Cooperative in Elk River, Cheri Frame was looking for a Minnesota history curriculum that would get her students interested and involved.

Her research into state history also piqued her own interest.

Her knowledge of state history was limited, said Cheri Frame.

While she knew who Father Hennepin was, Cheri Frame admits she had no idea what tribe he was captured by, she said.

Answer: the Ojibwa.

The history curriculum packages she found for third- and fourth-graders “... wasn’t an engaging way to learn and wasn’t a fun way to learn,” she said.

“I wanted to give the kids a reason to go home and learn the facts,” Cheri Frame said.
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With a bingo-style game in mind, Cheri enlisted Matt, and his passion for history, to help develop the questions.

Matt has the ability to read about history and remember all the dates and places, said Cheri Frame.

“He remembers things I have forgotten,” she said.

Once the questions were ready, Cheri Frame took it to her students.

With goodies as game pieces, the students used their knowledge to play, Cheri Frame said.

Our state gem, the agate, is often found along the shores of this body of water?

This January the game came off the shelf.

With 15-year-old Matt Frame studying economics and taking junior achievement as part of his homeschooling curriculum, Cheri knew the perfect project for him – he could market Spotlight on Minnesota.

Matt started with more in-depth research, learned how to set up a Web site, www.spotlightgames.org, from scratch and started marketing the game.

All of the game’s components, from the bag to the cards, are from Minnesota, said Cheri Frame.

“We wanted to make a quality product” that reflected Minnesota, she said.

The game was on the market four months later when Heppner’s Legacy Resources, Elk River, took the game to the 2008 annual convention of the Minnesota Association of Christian Home Educators in Duluth.

Matt has also been working to find other vendors for the game, said Cheri Frame.

Although the mother-son team has sent out letters to different shops about the game with little success, shop owners get excited about the game when they see it in person, she said.

While originally designed as a school game, Spotlight on Minnesota is a great cabin game, said Cheri Frame.

Her parents played the game with the cousins and it opened up a lot of conversations and reminiscences.

They started talking about their experiences growing up, she said.
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Matt Frame said he would like to see the game in the public schools as well as in Minnesota gift shops and at historical sites, like Oliver Kelley Farm.

“It’s a great way to get the kids to interact and challenge each other to learn,” he said.

Built to establish a sense of government in the Minnesota Territory, the first school, first hospital and the first post office were built within the walls of this establishment?

The game has three ways to play and each square has three correct answer, said Cheri Frames.

It can be played by up to 15 players or teams.

There are three questions for each of the game board’s 25 squares.

Questions can be answered by the first player who can answer it or given to one person at a time, said Cheri Frame.

But they did not include game pieces.

People can use food items, like marshmallows, or coins, said Cheri Frame.

And it is priced for teachers at $14.95.

“Being an educational family, we know there is not a lot of money out there for education,” said Cheri Frame, whose husband Tim is an Anoka High School math teacher.

Found in the wetlands, these plants can grow to be three feet tall and live for 50 years. What is our state flower?

The mother-son team said there could a possibility of other state games, like Iowa or Wisconsin, in the future.

But they have no plans right now, said Cheri Frame.

Any profits the team earns from the game will be used for Matt’s education.

He would like to go to a strategic intelligence camp in Washington, D.C., he said.

Matt Frame said he would like to get a doctorate in history, teach at a community college or to go overseas as a foreign ambassador.

The answers: General Mills, Lake Superior, Fort Snelling and pink and white lady slipper.