“Games galore at Hastings Museum” plus 1 more |
| Games galore at Hastings Museum Posted: 15 Feb 2011 03:18 AM PST HASTINGS -- For weeks, it has been snowy and cold outside, so the Hastings Museum invited kids to come inside and play games on Friday. Russanne Ericksen, curator of education, said the Out and About sessions at the museum try to concentrate on learning, being active and having fun. "We thought games, what's more fun than games?" she said Friday. The Out and About sessions are for kindergartners through sixth-graders when public schools have breaks. "We wanted it to be active because they have been cooped up inside with the crummy weather we've had," Ericksen said.Not only did the 16 kids, ages four to 11, learn about existing games, but they also got a chance to make up their own game. Provided with a bucket, bean bags, stick horses, a large die, three rings, three discs, three hats and plastic Easter eggs, each group of four kids came up with a game, complete with rules and a way to score. Hope Kohmetscher and Kaitlyn Hamburger, both 9, teamed up with Evah Thomas, 7, and Dacey Sealey, 8, to create their game. They went through several ideas including hopscotching through the hoops and racing back to the start with the stick horses before settling on a series of events. It started with hopping through the hoops, added a bean bag toss into the bucket that deducted 10 points for every one you missed and adding points for finding the right color of egg under the hats. Another group with Isaiah Sherman, 9, Karlee Sherman, 4, Brooke Aspen, 8, and Blake Aspen, 10, added a little scoring mathematics to their game. The hats were set upside down on the bean bags to keep them facing up. The player got 10 plastic Easter eggs to throw into the hats, placed at various distances and worth varying points. Then the player rolled the die to determine the number by which to multiply the egg toss score. "I like that you put some math into it," Ericksen told the young game makers. "You are all very creative." Other games included an obstacle course where the players lost points if they touched the ground and a game where the player tried to get a hoop over the head of a stick horse. The kids also learned about games throughout history, from some of the oldest such as marbles, which have been found in Egyptian pyramids dating to 2,000 years before Christ, to recent video games. Lynn Zeleski, volunteer coordinator and education coordinator, said the oldest toys were probably dolls, which were made of anything from animal fur to cornhusks. She said in some Native American cultures a cornhusk doll was made for a young girl about 3 or 4 and it lasted her until she was in her teens. Kids have been jumping rope for at least 5,000 years and chess was invented about 4,000 years ago in China. "Stick horses have been around as long as there have been sticks and as long as there have been horses," Zeleski said, adding that some of the oldest games involve racing or guessing games. The kids learned that bingo was originally called beano for the beans used as markers. It became popular in the late 1920s at county fairs and then became a popular fundraiser for churches. By 1939, Americans were playing 10,000 games of bingo each week. Charles Darrow became the nation's first millionaire when he sold the rights to Monopoly to Parker Brothers in 1934. "It's fun with a little bit of education thrown in," Ericksen said. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Toy Fair Notebook: Kids' tablets, tiered prices Posted: 14 Feb 2011 04:28 PM PST , On Monday February 14, 2011, 7:28 pm EST Here are some of Monday's highlights from the American International Toy Fair, which began Sunday: TABLETS FOR KIDS: Competition among Apple Inc.'s iPad, Android-based and other tablet devices may get lots of press in the adult world, but a parallel kid-size battle is heating up. Two educational toy companies are rolling out tablet devices -- both, perhaps coincidently, with the word "pad" in the name -- later this year. LeapFrog's $99.99 LeapPad Explorer will be out in the summer and VTech's $79.99 InnoPad will be out in the fall. Both devices share features with the iPad: a 5-inch touch screen, a tilt-sensor, a headphone jack and an interface with app-like square icons. And both are much sturdier, including plastic casing, than tablets for adults. The LeapPad offers e-books with a patented system that adjusts the text to the user's reading level. It supports 100 cartridge games and 65 learning applications, which are compatible with last year's LeapFrog Explorer, as well as 14 LeapPad specific applications. It also has a camera, which the InnoPad doesn't. The LeapPad connects to LeapFrog's online platform via USB cable, allowing parents to download projects their kids have worked on and enabling parents to post the projects to Facebook. "Tablets are emerging as an important device, and we had the opportunity to deliver that to kids," said Craig Hendrickson, chief product officer of LeapFrog. The InnoPad, meanwhile, has its own slate of books and games, including a pinball game that doubles as a spelling lesson. Like the LeapPad, it can connect to a computer via a USB port. It also has a kickstand that swivels to allow it to be used as a digital photo frame, and it has an SD card slot, which the LeapPad lacks. The InnoPad lets kids imitate their parents when they see them using tablets, said William To, president of VTech Electronics. "It's definitely the time to let children have their own pad," he said. TIERED TOY PRICING: After several years of adjusting prices to attract cautious consumers, toy makers are taking a different approach this year, offering higher- and lower-end versions of the same toy. The aim is to get kids interested in a brand without parents having to shell out top dollar. Bandai America, for example, has several versions of an arm band that goes with its Ben 10 line for the Cartoon Network show. The Ultimate Ultimatrix for $24.99 has intricate details and lights and sounds, and it comes out in the fall, along with two other versions with fewer details and features that sell at lower prices. TechnoSource meanwhile, revamped its 20Q game, a palm-size, orb-shaped electronic game of 20 Questions, with better software and a sleeker look. One version will be available at $12.99 and another at $20.99. Finally, Crayola is rolling out a Presto Dots Garden Playset that lets kids create a bouquet of flowers with six flower stems in a vase with colored modeling clay. The full set is $19.99, but a two-flower version is available for $6.99. Follow Yahoo! Finance on ; become a fan on Facebook. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| You are subscribed to email updates from kids games - Yahoo! News Search Results To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 comments:
Post a Comment