Sunday, August 9, 2009

A weekend away with 12 year olds - a learning experience

Number 1 son turned 12 yesterday. Now, in itself that's not a major for the planet - but for his mum and dad, well for us - pretty special. We ended up taking him and his 8 year old brother, plus two of his cousins, away for 24 hours in our motor home to Waingaro Springs where they have a pretty good water slide and where, in the middle of winter, not many people go. Great!

Josh had taken his Playstation along so that they had "something to do at night". I took along my iPod Touch to provide the music. The boys are usually not allowed to use my iPod, but being a birthday, well, I let them. What transpired was interesting. You see, I had downloaded a couple of free games and thought they'd be spending their time playing Star Wars Force Unleashed, or StuntCar or Waterslide etc etc. But what did they play?

Lemonade Tycoon - the iPod's version of Lemonade Stand. And did they play it for long? Well for two complete battery cycles! They loved it, were totally engaged. I asked Jord, our 8 year old, why he seemed to like it. "You need to use your mind" he replied. "But don't you need to use your mind on those other games too?" I replied. "No" was the response, "they're just games. In Lemonade Tycoon you need to make all sorts of decisions ..." he went on to tell me what he'd found out about how the game worked. His brother was just the same. "Well, you are in control of what happens" he said.

So, rather than play a pile of graphically awesome fantasy games, Lemonade Tycoon was their choice because they felt they were in control of what was happening.
So the lesson for me is quite clear - the choice of activity does not need to be the flashest looking - but it does need to give a sense of being involved - "to use your mind" as Jord said.

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