Tag Archive for 'gamification'

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How to Make Spring Cleaning Fun For Kids: Sock Puppet Dusters, Sponge Shapes and Baking Soda Explosions

Make spring cleaning a party with these ideas

Having trouble getting the kids to lend a hand? Add a little fun! Here are a few suggestions:

Sock-cleaning the bathtub: Your kids get to feel like they’re making a mess while they’re actually cleaning. Coat the tub with some lathery soap flakes or sudsy cleanser, add water, and let them dance the tub clean.

Make hand puppet dusters: Hand puppets can slide along banisters, along coffee tables and counters, “devouring” dust as they go. Hot glue gun some felt ears, yarn wiskers, googly eyes onto a sock and you’re kid will have a handheld cleaning buddy.

Glam cleaning tools: Get kids to make their own glam feather dusters by bunching together multicoloured craft feathers with an elastic and fastening it to a bamboo rod or chopstick. Kids’ are much more likely to get into something when they get to use tools that are their size for them.

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Will J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore Website Be a Game?

We hear that gamification is the big things these days…

Last week we discovered that Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is cooking up something new with her website Pottermore.com. We’ve just checked her YouTube annoucement page and you wouldn’t believe all the owls crowding up the place! Mashable reports that the Times UK got ahold of a memo that said Pottermore will be an online gaming site. We imagine we’ll hear more tomorrow, in 17 hours’ time.

So what sort of games would you expect?

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Play-Based Learning: Do We Need to Teach Our Kids How to Play?

Did you catch our latest Bunch Poll in the National Post?


Playing seems like the most natural thing in the world for a child. Turns out playing is also how children learn best. Now that they’ve figured this out, educators are worried children aren’t playing enough and that their play might not be sufficiently playful. So this Sunday, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario hosted the Ultimate Block Party, an event where parents and children made art, played games and went home with a kind of textbook for playing called “The Playbook.”

While it’s unlikely anyone would disagree with the notion that playing is good for children, do we need to be worried about how our kids play? The staff at Bunchland.com, a lifestyle website for parents, put this question to a group of experts, parents and one kid.