Lucas Learning - Critical Thinking - Enrichment Activities: Star Wars Yoda's Challenge -- More Than Meets the Eye

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Enrichment Activities: Star Wars® Yoda's Challenge™--
More Than Meets the Eye

At Lucas Learning®, we start with the assumption that all kids love to learn. Spend a day watching a typical second grader and you'll see that she is constantly learning as she interacts with and make sense of her world. Some of the learning is organized and formal and lots is not. What's important about the informal learning is that it is in an authentic context.

In Yoda's Challenge, the Lucas Learning team set out to create an informal learning environment in which kids could enter the familiar world of Star Wars Episode I and interact with some of their favorite characters. We decided to create six spirited activities and to use every opportunity to invite learning. We wanted kids to love the activities AND we wanted them to learn. We wanted the product to be rich and deep, yet not feel like "homework."

Much care went into the design of each activity. Kids helped us make them fun and easy to play. Reading, math, and music educators helped us make sure the learning was age-appropriate and based on a good understanding of each subject area. To a child, the activities are about exploring a cave and finding Gungan relics, playing and singing Anakin's favorite songs, or helping solve puzzles to program C-3PO. Yet, if you look more closely, you'll find that there's more than meets the eye.

• In Explore a Naboo Swamp Cave, students practice following directions using left, right and the cardinal directions. The cave doors are designed to reinforce concepts such as "above", "below", "next to", "all", "many", "few", "single", "group."

• Help Program C-3PO's Memory is a puzzle game in which kids program C-3PO by constructing sentences that form brief stories. Each story illustrates a character trait such as honesty, friendship, courage, or responsibility-all traits drawn from a list developed by consensus by the Character Education Partnership.

• Jam with the Cantina Band invites musical exploration. The scale mirrors the natural range of children's voices between the ages of six and nine. The fanciful songs cover many major genres of music, ranging from classical music to marches, lullabies, and jazz.

Developing a great game for kids in which they also learn is a little like cooking terrific-tasting food that is also nutritious. The joy comes from watching the kids gobble down the food and the satisfaction comes from knowing it is also good for them. That's how we feel when we watch kids play Yoda's Challenge.

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