The gaming application that teaches young children how to help you save the world

Increased screen time could possibly not be the most evident option for connecting people today with the surroundings, but as the range of gamers around the globe is predicted to get to 2.9 billion at the stop of this yr, the market offers enough prospects to draw focus to environmental concerns – particularly for more youthful audiences.

When Toby Hunt was generating tips for what would at some point become the Earth Cubs application, he wanted young children to find out about environmental concerns as a result of a favourable lens to counter the dependable perception of doom surrounding conversations on local weather adjust.

“There’s a kind of eco-panic created by the messaging about how we’re chopping down the rainforests and it’s all a disaster. It can be pretty terrifying. I’d a lot alternatively they listened to about the surprise and awe of natural environments and learnt how to preserve them,” mentioned Mr Hunt, the CEO of Earth Cubs.

With over 65,000 downloads, the application, which makes use of puzzles, video clips and games to make defending the setting exciting, dubs its 3–7-year-old gamers ‘Earth Cubs’.

Youngsters can manner their Earth Cub avatar in their likeness and journey throughout the planet, traveling to various environments close to the globe. Worthwhile classes about character and biodiversity are scattered across the Amazon rainforest, the Arctic and the City of London.

What caught with 6-year-aged Oscar following discovering these habitats was that he “should check out to cycle and stroll as an alternative of going in the car”.

Learning extends over and above the household, as Earth Cubs delivers free lesson options that tie into the Countrywide Curriculum. So significantly 1,500 schools throughout the place have utilised these resources to fill their classroom with Earth Cubs, a title kids get critically in accordance to Emma Redgrove, a teacher at Penwortham Major in Wandsworth.

“They recognize their obligations as world-wide citizens so a lot much more through getting an ‘Earth Cub’,” she states.

In Lancaster, Lisa Allan, a nursery instructor at Austwick Key School claims it can usually be tricky to interact youthful small children when it comes to complicated subject areas like the surroundings.

“Earth Cubs captures both children’s focus and imagination, no make a difference their person finding out styles,” she claims.

The app and teacher methods are no cost, something Mr Hunt intends to keep on. “If we’re likely to establish a model which has a global effects, we have to have it to be obtainable,” he says.

By way of planting trees in Madagascar when children receive badges, Earth Cubs is aspect of a technology of video games which try out to use true daily life effects to incentivize small children to engage with local climate conservation.

Searching ahead, Mr Hunt needs Earth Cub to associate with other environmental organisations to garner fundraising opportunities, as perfectly as produce new pure habitats for small children to discover.

“We want to develop the selection of environments and have had a ton of interest from various spots in the British isles. But whichever bizarre and excellent put we go to, we test and relate it back again to what kids can do in their area space to make a variance.”

Since of this mind-set, Earth Cubs has gained the 2021 BETT awards in the cost-free electronic written content or open educational assets classification, beating worthy competition like BBC Bitesize Each day and Discovery education and learning.