At last, the final set of the new phase of Kardtects, the Lost Desert set, were given their test run. From the test runs of both the Forbidden Jungle and Grisoc Castle, we had already seen the success of the new advanced cards. So, when we passed on the new Desert style cards to our young testing agents, we already felt assured that they would be warmly embraced. They certainly were. Even so, our excitement was to see how young creative minds would use the new options that this set offers.
Virtually all the cards of this new set offer a more decorative feel, and as expected, the primary structures the children built were vast pyramids, but now more colourful and ornate than ever before. Our anticipation was to see what would they do when they had finished these basic buildings. Would they limit their expectations to just building pyramids or would they look to build others?
In the previous tests, it appears the children were more familiar with the basic styles of castles and were more adventurous in creating jungle huts and temples, as they appeared to just instinctively build. Yet we have reached the conclusion that the word ‘instinctive’ is not really correct, and it appears that the children were more aware of these designs and so built along, at least, a basic awareness of them. As, when it came building with the Desert set, we witnessed yet another unexpected reaction.
The children did indeed build pyramids, but instead of either just accepting the set was limited to that, and not resorting to free-creative building, the majority of children from 7-13 year olds, went off to research Egyptian and Mayan buildings and THEN came back to build other designs. We unexpectedly saw that this new wave of Kardtects actually encouraged children to go off and study, to find for themselves how ancient architecture looked.
Again, these cards were not given with any instruction for the children, they were not forced to play, given a reward to play or given a stipulated time to play – these tests were just children given a box of cards and told that they could be stacked, as per the enclosed instructions, to build card houses. And they certainly did.
Watch video showing an example of how to build a pyramid. And Subscribe to not miss other ideas on building card houses!