By Eliana Hudson, UMKC communications intern

In Mrs. Moore and Ms. Owen’s fourth/ fifth grade class I noticed that the students were viewing a video. It was of nine year old Caine Monroy as he proudly shared the surprise flash mob of his intricate cardboard arcade games. Located in his father’s auto shop in East L.A., Caine’s arcade takes over almost the entire store. Using his creativity and imagination to combat boredom, Caine created the ultimate cardboard utopia. His innovation helped to foster a movement to promote creative play, resourcefulness, and student centered learning. This movement is the “Cardboard Challenge.”

This video, titled “Caine’s Arcade,” inspired our scholars to accept the Cardboard Challenge and to make their own cardboard arcade. The fourth/ fifth grade class began by taking a field trip to Power Play and writing in their observation journals. Mi’kyiah and her group are creating a photo booth, so they observed the one in Power Play to see how it worked. They also wrote down questions to figure out what they needed to add for their own photo booth. Rami’s group is creating a claw machine, and they started by researching different kinds of claws the machines use. The next steps they took were to stabilize the structures, plan how they wanted to decorate the constructions, and determine how to create their own tickets.

The five games are The Claw, Photo Booth, All Star Quarterback Toss, Candy Shooter, and The Quest. Markell worked on the All Star Quarterback Toss and is excited for his friends to play the game. His biggest take-away from this project is to “always be creative.”
Tomorrow, October 29th, the class will present their finished arcade games. From 2 – 3 and 4 – 5:30, scholars and visitors will be able to play the student-created games.

For more information about the Global Cardboard Challenge, please visit their website or check out their Facebook page.