My kids are both avid readers, but neither have been good with maintaining a reading log, sometimes requested by their teachers.

I thought if I reduced the effort required to maintain the reading log, they’d be more likely to track the books they read.  I created a website where, using a smart phone, they could just take a picture of the bar code on a given book.  The website would read the bar code, and make a call to the Google Books API to retrieve the book title and author, and add it to the reading log.

The kids are always drawing characters and writing, and I was wondering - could we use this to make a game together?

It turns out, we can.

I’d guess in about 30 hours, we’ve put together a small world where:

• The player can wander around our world
• The kids have both drawn characters that appear in the game
• My 7 year old has designed a couple of maps
• Together with my 7 year old, we have written some dialogue
• I figured out how to build out some simple logic, connecting scenes

First, I looked into various game making tools.  I ended up using Stencyl, the first one I tried.  I checked it out first because the free version is limited only in that it only allows you to publish your game to the web (as opposed to desktop or mobile versions), and, for me, a big bonus was that it runs in Linux.

Willowdale is a game I made with my kids where you can explore our neighbourhood.  You can read more about how we created it in  Creating A Game.

The Game

You can access the game at http://willowdale.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/

Controls

• Arrow keys to navigate
• Enter key to advance dialog
• Move your character to the ladders to move from one map to the next

My 7 year old recently acquired a fish bowl with a betta fish.

Apparently, the PLA plastic used in 3D printers doesn’t degrade significantly in a fish tank, so I started looking for aquarium decorations we could print.  And I came across a design for a fish feeder: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1257953

I started modifying it to accommodate our fish bowls.  She asked to help out, so I suggested she do a sketch of her design.

About a month ago, my youngest daughter borrowed a really neat toy called “Talkative Chick’s House Ppiyak-e House Bird Toy Mimiworld”, who’d brought the toy back with her on a trip from Korea.

A while ago, my daughter and I built an outhouse out of Popsicle sticks and a cereal box.  I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but she held on to it and kept it alongside her toys.  She even brought it to school one day when she had to present a craft she had made.