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Epic Mickey Is Not a Learning Kids Game
It’s hard to tell exactly what the plan was with Disney’s new video game, Epic Mickey, out for the Nintendo Wii. Of course it’s a platformer — “platforming” has a rich heritage of successful, exciting games, where the basic premise involves getting your character (in this case, Mickey Mouse) from Point A to Point B by jumping — platforming — from space to space. Epic Mickey’s genre is filled with classics from the 8-bit and 16-bit era like Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog, and is paired up against modern-day critical-darling or smash-hits like Super Meat Boy and Psychonauts. The first thing you should know is that Epic Mickey is in no way a learning kid’s game. There is very little in the way of educational value outside the incidental lessons one learns from falling off a cliff over and over.
The second thing you should know is that Epic Mickey is incredibly frustrating to control for an adult with a lifetime of video game playing, much less a youngster who might not be used to the advanced and often finicky control scheme. The truth is that these awful controls and the fact that it’s not a learning kids game effectively breaks Epic Mickey. Read the rest of this entry »
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Does Your Child Learn the Hard Way
Does your child act before he thinks?
Does your child pat a dog, even though you warn him not to?
Would your child ignore a ‘wet paint, don’t touch’ sign and check it out for themselves?
If you’re busy nodding your head then chances are your child likes to learn through trial and error.
“You can tell me all you want, but I’m going to find out for myself” is their motto. They don’t like to be told. Experience is their teacher. The lessons learned at the school of hard knocks can be bitter, which makes parenting these kids pretty tough.
Inside school these kids are hands-on and tactile. They love to experiment and tinker. They learn about flight by making paper aeroplanes and flying them through their classrooms. They’ll adjust the nose, tail and wings to make it fly longer. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: learning kid