You better carry on with your training….
I don’t know about anyone else, but since we’ve had to stay inside, I have mastered my Mickey Mouse, Tigger and Sven voices. There’s something rather embarrassing about hearing your neighbours laugh as you talk to your three-year-old daughter about how great bouncing is. Yet, parents around the country, if not the globe, are having to keep their children entertained while not leaving the confines of their home. It’s not easy.
I’m also a primary school teacher, so as well as looking after my children, I’m also working from home, setting work and recording videos for my class to help engage them in learning without my physical presence. That too is not easy. Combine the two together, to become a teacher and a parent? Well, there’s a reason we have lots of holidays!
But what does this all have to do with Star Wars? The best way to engage your child in learning is to relate it to what they enjoy most. For a lot of children, this could be Star Wars and if it is, this article is an attempt to give you a few ideas of what you might be able to get your little padawans to do during all this downtime, as well as keeping their thinking brains ticking over.
At the core of all these activities, is you, the parent. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m really enjoying spending so much time with my three-year-old. I know she is enjoying it too and it is the silver lining of this whole situation. Children adore their parents and they want to do things with them, whether it is something simple that they can share with you, or something they wouldn’t usually be able to do without you there. So, take advantage of this extra precious time we’ve been given. It may seem exhausting, but we want our children to remember these as happy times….
Hands up who built Tracy Island back in the early nineties, watching Anthea Turner on Blue Peter guiding us with lots of papier mache? Children love to make mess and they love papier mache. Star Wars is full of locations that you could use cereal boxes, crisp tubes, milk bottles and a host of others, to create different places. Or why not a vehicle? If they have toys, even better, use it as a place for them! This can be as small or extravagant as you want it to be. Have the children first draw what you are going to make and then break it down into different parts. What do you have around the house that they could use to create certain parts? You’ll be amazed at what they can come up with! Once they’ve designed it, you can make it. After making it, then comes the painting. This can be a lengthy project, but the results can be astounding. If you’d rather just have crafty things, then look no further than Kelly Knox and her Star Wars crafts on starwars.com. There are great ideas to help be creative in a galaxy far, far away.
If your child has a computer tablet, stop motion apps are a wonderful thing to use with them. On the iPads at school, we use motion, to create mini movies. For Star Wars, this is where action figures, or Lego creations can come to life. It requires a degree of patience, but it’s worth it to see the look on their faces when they realise what they can achieve (we’ve had Paw Patrol toys coming to life in my house!). To make this an even bigger project, the creative work from the previous paragraph, could form the background for the entire movie! For older children who want to do something computer based, you could even have them create their own edit of the Star Wars movies or create their own trailer.
One of the most important things, particularly with younger children, is to read with them. Children are able to access stories they wouldn’t be able to read themselves and look to their parents to model how to read with expression, when to pause and lead them to improving their own writing. Star Wars has a host of books for readers of all ages, from picture books like Chewie and the Porgs by Kevin Shinick, to books for 7 to 11-year olds with the Star Wars: Adventures in Wild Space series by Cavan Scott and Tom Huddleston or books for teens with A Crash of Fate by Zoraida Córdova as an example. If your child prefers comics, I can’t recommend IDW’s Star Wars Adventures any higher, it’s perfect for family reading. While not Star Wars related, my daughter and I read their My Little Pony series together.
When I was younger, I’d play with my brother with our vintage Star Wars action figures and we’d create adventures for Luke, Han and Leia to go on. Playing with your child is great fun but can then help form the basis for them actually doing some writing (which is usually the toughest bit to motivate them to do). Play with them, have their favourite character go off on some crazy adventure, then write about it. It doesn’t have to be the best writing in the world, but the act of them thinking and getting pen to paper is going to be a step in the right direction. If they’re doing the stop motion, why not get them to write a script that they can overdub the video with?
Board games are great for providing interaction with family members as well as problem solving skills. There are some great Star Wars games out there to play, the best at the moment probably being Outer Rim. However, another one I’d like to suggest at this time is Star Wars Destiny from Fantasy Flight Games. It is a card game where you create a team and roll dice to defeat your opponent. It was a game I loved but is now sadly coming to an end. However, it also makes it the perfect time to buy, as lots of retailers are heavily discounting their stock. It provides hours and hours of fun, and at a cheap price, it can’t be bad! It is also very easy to pick up for younger children, which makes it even more ideal. More recently we also saw the rerelease of the vintage Escape from the Death Star board game with an exclusive Grand Moff Tarkin Retro figure. This would be a way for Star Wars fans young and old to engage together.
My final suggestion is cooking. This is something I have quite a passion for in my day to day teaching as I think it is so important. Cooking is a life skill that we all need. Not only that but the use of maths in a real-life context is a great way to learn how to read and measure using scales. Try and create a dish or cake that could have a Star Wars name. Maybe you could have red velvet cake covered in icing sugar and call it the delights of Crait? Or create a bantha steak? Or even explore what herbs Yoda could have used to spruce up his stew for Luke? Most children love creating (and then eating) food dishes. Not only that, but they can then write the recipe up to create their own Star Wars cookbook (and do some writing in the process). There are several Star Wars cookbooks out if you need some inspiration, including the Galaxy’s Edge cookbook.
This is not a definitive list, but a list to help inspire. I hope it helps to keep you and your padawans busy during this difficult time. The one thing that motivates children even more is being able to share what they do, to give them a purpose to what they’re doing. So, if you do any Star Wars activities in your home, I would love to see them, as I’m sure other fans would to also give them ideas.
Take photos, share them with us on Twitter and let’s fill the internet with what we can do as opposed to what we can’t.
