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This ToyShow Preview was last updated on 4/3/2006

A board game which teaches children as young as eight about business and investment in the global environment?
—While also offering hours of wholesome, interactive family fun and entertainment?
—As well as improving children’s individual math, geography and reading skills while they’re playing?

Yes. It can be done. It has been done! Its name is Crackernomics, a highly original and innovative board game which is the first of four aimed at teaching kids the basics of investing and business in the global environment. It is being launched by KSA Interactive Games, a division of KSA International, one of the world’s most acknowledged and experienced designers, developers and suppliers of business simulation games for the corporate and educational environments.
Click Here to see some of the products KSA INTERNATIONAL has shared with TDmonthly Magazine as of 3/28/2006.

Crackernomics, a highly interactive board game based on the principles of learning through play, is just the first of four vertically interfaced games to be offered to the market. Each of the three subsequent versions of the simulation game, aimed at sequentially older age groups, will build and overlap on the previous model by incorporating increasing business reality and complexity into the play.

Through the use of child friendly buying, selling and trading of Cracker Mills, Crackernomics introduces children ages 8 and up to the idea of the world as a marketplace. While playing, kids learn about:
  • making decisions,
  • managing investments,
  • balancing accounts,
  • communicating with others and negotiating trades,
  • identifying investment opportunities and risks.
  • and calculating Returns on Investment (ROI)


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And, through their travels with Will Trader, the entrepreneurial wood duck, accompanied by the wise owl Professor Hootee and the scheming raccoon Bandee the Bandit, youngsters also begin to learn about the different countries, economies and cultures of the world.


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Although the entire four game set—geared around both board game and interactive templates—is designed for youngsters to easily grasp and enjoy, the principles underlying these games mirror those of the bedrock corporate version: the learning approach is heuristic. In other words: “learning by doing”. Which, as the learning theorists have long told us, is far more effective than learning by rote, or by memorization, or by one way/top down instruction, whether delivered by an individual or a video.


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“Our gift is the methodology: it’s direct, it’s immediate, it’s interactive, and it’s vibrant! With this approach, youngsters themselves have to decide, individually and jointly, if and when to invest, and when to trade. And then they see, in real time, what happens as a result of those decisions, and they end up learning like they’ve never learned before! You’ve just got to see what happens when kids are playing the game and doing it: they get jazzed up! They begin manifesting a whole new set of semantics and language steeped in the genres of business, and of finance, and of economics. All with a global slant.”


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Click here to see product archives KSA INTERNATIONAL has shared with TDmonthly Magazine as of 3/28/2006.
 
 CONTACT INFORMATION:
KSA INTERNATIONAL
8341 Sangre De Cristo Road #103
Littleton, CO 80127-4267
Ph: 1-877 KSA Game
http://www.ksainteractivegames.com/
gschinker@ksa-usa.com
This ToyShow archives was last updated on 4/3/2006
TDmonthly > ToyShow Preview > Educational > KSA INTERNATIONAL Previous | Next