The beautiful dragon crawled from the crooked trunk… Seems like the start (or end) of quite a story. I made this simple Android application using Google’s App Inventor program.
This program fill gaps “Mad Lib” style with a random word to create a single – and, most likely, silly sentence.
I have a button at the bottom that randomly picks “Beginning” or “End”. So, the silly sentence is either the beginning or the end of a story. Me and the family has to fill in the rest. Its a fun way to tweak our imaginations.
Every button (except for the two “the’s”) can be pressed, changing the meaning of the sentence in surprising, existential, and silly ways.
This is a project I made during the 1-in-1 (1 project in 1 day) challenge in early June. So far, the kids and I have had fun with it. Though my daughters obsessed with fairies, so she keeps clicking the subject button until its a fairy. Then the adjective until its beautiful.
Here’s what the block code looks like. If you have an Android and Google App Inventor, you can download the .apk file here. You can customize it with your own word groups.
In a nutshell, you are given a set of parts – blocks of different weights and wheels of different sizes to build a car to go through a course with the aim of not only finishing the course, but also hitting a star along the way.
Sure, it sounds simple – and some levels are a snap. But others require a perfectly tweaked “car” built with the right dimensions, weight distribution, and wheel placement in order to make it across the course – hopefully hitting the star along the way.
One pachinko-like level was particularly infuriating in only the way that a great game can be. I still haven’t quite figured out the perfect vehicle for that level.
Go Car Go’s physics-based play reminds me of one of my other favorite games – Crayon Physics. But this adds the element of blocks, weight, and wheels.
It was fun watching my 6 and almost 5-year-old work together to create different versions of cars. The conversation about physics was a pure bonus to the fun gameplay. Yes, we did shout, “Go Car Go”. Of course, we were collectively satisfied when our contraptions made it to the finish line while getting a star. But my kids also seemed to find building cars that were destined to fail particularly hysterical.
Sand, water, moving parts, and imagination are the key elements of David Rockwells imagination Playground in a Box. We’re going to be seeing more of these make their way across playgrounds around NYC and the country. Which, from the looks of the video, is a very cool thing. I’m a big fan of giving kids open-ended stuff and saying, “play”. The results are always more interesting that anything an adult could “assign” them.
