[New] Release 1.13 Physics and Nutrition apps now available!

Two new activities have been released today. Both have been designed using our brand new process based on the ‘Whole Child’ concept aiming at providing educators with tools and activities matching their specific curriculum needs on a physical, intellectual, social and emotional level.

You will also be pleased to know that a new member has joined our team whose job is to focus on the educational aspects of what we do and therefore adding more brain power to our educational game design process.

Grüb

Collect the necessary ingredients for a well-balanced meal. Watch out for the bins though — they’ll try to slow you down!

Nutrition is an essential element on any physical education curriculum across the world. Loyal to our approach we went on a mission to cover this topic through a fun and entertaining activity. Inspired by Pac-Man and Qbert game mechanics (and yes we have some grey haired designer amongst the team), we developed this game focusing on teaching kids three essential notions:

• What do ingredients look like
• What food groups do specific ingredients fall into
• What is a balanced diet according to the food groups

We relied on guidelines from all over the world in order to make sure our approach suited standards across the globe.
 Here are some of the sources used to develop the standards for Grüb:

• Harvard
• Canada’s food guide  
• Sweden’s food-based dietary guidelines
• National Health Education Standards

Phÿs

Mozzart the mouse wants his cheese! Team up to solve physics puzzles and help him find it.

This one has quickly became one of our favorites. Our lead developer couldn’t stop laughing while playing it!

When we set our team to work on this one, we decided to focus on collaboration in an unstructured manner. Let’s say that we wanted to create an open field in order to develop cooperation skills and problem solving in the freest environment possible. We wanted to set the playing field for creative thinking, problem solving, and intellectual focus which are all transverse skills required for kids’ education. A freer approach or, in more technical terms, Discovery Learning, also meant that we were setting a loose framework where kids had to also figure out their own approach to the puzzle where many solutions are possible and where collaboration and communication are essential.

Finally, as in most academic subjects, in order to better build kids’ understanding, the topic needs to be introduced early on in their development and they need to interact with it in many different aspects. Phÿs does just that. It introduces in a kinesthetic manner the basic principles of mass, gravity, vectors, translations, inertia, force, etc.

Here are some other sources we used for inspiration:

• http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/methods/theories/discovery.html
• https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/critical-and-creative-thinking/
• https://www.wabisabilearning.com/blog/skills-every-student-needs

Have fun!