Disney Homework exchange

Twenty years ago this month our Coast Guard son-in-law was transferred from Morgan City LA to Duluth MN. Our 8 year old granddaughter elected to stay with us while her parents house hunted in the northland (wise decision on her part). It wound up being only a month that she was with us, but her dad wanted her to keep busy with schoolwork. As if that child would have parked herself in front of Sponge Bob.

This is one of the math (arithmetic really) problems I devised for her.
Part one was Magic Kingdom, with every attraction listed. An attraction is ride, show, anything to do, etc. Some 50 items were on the list. We used graph paper because the next task was to ask each family member to rate each attraction. Rating involved three choices: never need to do that again, neutral, and MUST DO EVERY TIME. Extended family live near, so she was able to canvass about a dozen people. I had her assign point values to the three choices, 1 through 3, with 3 being the must do category. Thus if there were 50 attractions at MK and a person NEEDED to do each one, the point values would total 150.

She did this for each of the four parks, so part 2 was Epcot, 3 was the Studios and 4 was Animal Kingdom.

She then totaled up all the points for each park, and divided by the total number possible for that park, discovering which park we liked best and which was the least liked. The results surprised us.

She worked on this at her own pace, and as she had access to family members. I think it took her about a week, but I’ve slept since then.

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Very cool! I need to come up with a simplified version for my almost 5 y/o.

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With greater internet access today this project would be great for a 5 year old to interview family members and friends.

Most of us are available. :grin:

Greater or lesser than is a good activity. My 7 and 8 year old great granddaughters have some interesting gaps in this regard. :thinking:

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This would be fun just to reference for the next trip too!

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And the results are…?? You can’t leave me like this!!

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Our extended family liked 85% of Epcot.

MK, AK and the Studios were in a clump at 58%, 60%, and 62%. Altho probably in reverse order.

I wasn’t surprised Epcot came in first or that the Studios were last. It did surprise me that Epcot was so far ahead of any other park and that MK was so close to AK and the Studios.

It seems to me it’s time to revisit this exercise as a couple of things have changed in 20 years.

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You never know! Our youngest loves Epcot. My husband I would rate it first for us too. Our youngest loves HS, but only because of GE. They enjoy the more laid-back pace. I enjoy the entertainment.

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SOMEbody must have a Disney homework idea.

Or are they called hacks now?

How about this: you have $5000 to spend on a WDW vacation.
Who, where, how long and what do you do?

For younger, maybe ranking/ordering their favourite rides or characters. Spelling their names? Reading Disney books? My kids are only 4 & 6 so not much help here.

This age can be a challenge. Especially if reading or motor skills levels are distinctly different from other skill levels.

They do seem to have plenty of opinions tho. And if they’ve been on a Disney vacation you can have some fun with them. One thing that comes to mind is taking Mickey and friends on a make believe trip to WDW. I’d probably use a map of a park as a visual aid. And probably only do one land per day except for HS. Have them imagine Mickey or Donald riding on the Magic Carpets or Big Thunder Mtn and decide what their reactions would be.

My 5 yo great granddaughter rode nearly everything she was tall enough for at WDW. She says she won’t ride most again. Minnie and her good friend Daisy are my GGD’s favs. I’ll have to have some conversations with her about which rides her friends will like. :smile:

The moment you realize just how old you’ve become without noticing.

“Animal Kingdom? That’s not possible. Animal Kingdom wasn’t open 20 years ago…”

goes and looks up the date

“Uh. Wow.”

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I could come up with ideas based on age.

One simpler one would be to price out how much it would cost to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus a snack, at one of the parks. For younger kids, you could pick out the food/places to eat. For older kids, you could actually set a budget and have them figure out how to get everyone fed under budget, etc.

Another might be to use Google maps to estimate distances, and have them calculate how far you would walk (not including time in the queues) to go from various rides throughout the day.

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Just got an email about this:

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/hass-storytelling/imagineering-in-a-box

Sounds like fun!

This looks wonderful! I know some kinds who will enjoy this so much.

Thanks for sharing!