Leapster Explorer The Clone Wars Game Review

Star Wars has been a hit with kids for almost 40 years.

I was a fan of the Force as a young child and it continues to this day, so much so that it is rare of me to go through a day without thinking of Star Wars in one situation or another, however abstract…
(I’m listening to the music as I type this!).

Then again my latent geekiness may have something to do with the fact that I have a nine year old son.

My son is heavily into Star Wars and loves the Clone Wars most of all (no matter how much I try to show him the value of the original trilogy!). The Clone Wars is a CGI cartoon set in between Episodes two and three and is full of action.

This action focus is the approach Leapfrog have chosen to take with their Leapster Explorer Clone Wars Game.

The Leapster Explorer Clone Wars Game is ostensibly a mathematics game that teaches:

• Place Value
• Parts of a Whole 
• More Than, Less Than 
• Decimals, Fractions and Percentage 
• Shapes 
• Geometry

In the game the player controls Anakin Skywalker or Obi Wan Kenobi as they battle their way through various challenges to save the Republic from the Seperatists’s Battle Droids and the ultimate big-bad the Ultra Droideka.

Game play involves using a lightsaber to slice through droids, using the force to move objects and flying your Jedi Starfighter through asteroids and caves.

For those parents worried about violence, the Clone Wars game is recommended for ages 6+ and would be considered more of an “action” game than anything else and certainly has no blood or gratuitous violence.

The Star Wars Clone Wars Leapster Explorer Game certainly has a high appeal with boys of this age group so if your child is drawn to computer games and the Clone Wars then this is a great way to introduce learning in to their play. 

Leapster Explorer Learning Game: Star Wars: The Clone Wars

• Place Value : Fundamental to mathematics and computation, place value gives children the ability to compare tens to hundreds, hundreds to thousands, and so on – as well as to understand and count money.
• Parts of a Whole: Children first come to understand about part-whole relationships through sharing. It is only later that this knowledge becomes formalized and builds the foundation for learning decimals, fractions and precentages.
• More Than, Less Than: The concept of more than/less than deepens a child’s number sense by teaching him to compare numbers. Children begin with informal and approximate comparisons using the terms “more” and “less”; then they learn the terms and symbols for greater than (>), less than (<) and equal to (=).
• Decimals, Fractions and Percentage: Children first understand fractions as parts of a whole or parts of a set. They begin to connect fractions to decimals, and finally to percentages.
• Shapes: Identifying and manipulating shapes lays the groundwork for geometry by giving children concrete experience with angles, symmetry and relative sizes.

Tagged as: leapster explorer, Leapster Explorer Games