JediBoy loves his Leapster. For Christmas, he got a few new games, including Animal Genius. He tried it a few times but decided it was too hard. (Remember when he made a New Year’s Resolution to “Play hard Leapster games”?)
Last week, when we spent big blocks of time at the hospital meeting HonoraryCousin, JediBoy brought his Leapster with him. He dug Animal Genius out of the bottom of the bag, and this time he’s hooked.
It’s a pretty interesting game - you can choose from one of several habitats (grasslands, arctic, etc.) and go into that habitat to earn animals. There are 4 different mini-games that you can choose from, and winning each one earns you 1-3 points. Once you earn 10 points, you earn a new animal. For the next animal, you have to start again at 0 and earn 20 points. There are 30, 40 and 50 point animals too. When you have earned enough points to get a new animal, you have to correctly answer 10 yes-or-no questions about that animal: Is it a mammal? Does it fly? Does it lay eggs? Is it a predator? etc.
I’m impressed with JediBoy’s level of interest and enthusiasm for the game - and the fact that he rarely gets a question wrong, and when he does, it’s a tough one (to earn the lion, he had to answer Is it bigger than a tiger?). The mini-games are fun too. You have to match the animal body part (noses, ears, eyes, etc.) to the animal; use the pen to “scratch” and reveal part of a picture, then guess what the animal is based on what you see; drag-and-drop animals to answer questions like Which animal is heavier? or Which animal has more legs?; and use the arrow pad to move an animal around a small maze to pick up food.
The mini-games get harder as you start working towards the 50-point animals - in Maze Munch, you also have to avoid one or two predators while getting to the food. As the games stop, start and segue, the narrators share interesting facts about the animals, their habits and habitats.
JediBoy is loving it, and wants everyone he’s with to play it too.
This morning, after breakfast, we played with our playdough for about half an hour. We usually make new playdough the first week of the month, but somehow we missed March. So we’re still playing with the pink playdough with glitter hearts from February! It leaves our hands a little drier and saltier, but it’s still perfectly pliable. JediBoy directed first several “haircuts” (eventually leaving the poor playdough person bald) and then we created “homes and towns” by making tunnels with our fingers in the giant ball of dough.
When JediBoy was done with that, I was reading through some old magazines. I’m on a never-ending quest to declutter, and so I found myself leafing through the magazines and ripping out the articles or recipes I wanted to save. JediBoy looked to me for a new activity, and I thought of collages.
We’ve tried magazine collages a few times in the past. When I first introduced the idea to JediBoy last spring, he was frustrated that his scissor skills weren’t good enough that he could cut the pictures out independently, and his frustration was so great we shelved the idea. In the fall, he was interested for a short time in just cutting pieces from magazine pages, not necessarily trying to cut out pictures. We did a few abstract collages that way, but it didn’t really hold his attention, or mine.
When I reintroduced the idea today, he was very interested. He was having a hard time holding the magazine open and trying to cut from it, so I suggested that I would rip out some pages and he could cut pictures off the pages. He was willing to let me help, so I asked what kind of pictures I should look for.
He immediately said ANIMALS. He looked through the pages and talked about finding animals and their habitats. He made two simple collages, entirely of his own design:
one was a “garden” with trees, flowers and a snake
the other was “the arctic” with snow-covered mountains, a glacier and some penguins.
The knowledge and the interest came from the Leapster game. This is so much more satisfying than if I had planned a unit and read him a book, given him some worksheets, and then directed him to make a collage of his favorite habitat. Or asked him to perform an interpretive dance. It’s all fun.
