Groove Jones worked with President’s Choice Children’s Charity to develop an innovative educational digital platform, “Power Full Kids,” and an interactive game, “Sunny’s Bee-utiful Food Adventure,” to foster a love for learning about food, cultivation, and sustainability for young learners while providing a user-friendly and comprehensive learning environment.
The goal is to teach students the 3 C’s (being Clean, Careful, and Confident in the garden and kitchen).
This digital platform is the group’s first nationwide digital program to combine existing food access programs with proprietary content to teach children growing and cooking skills to advance education.
President’s Choice Children’s Charity is an independent, registered Canadian charity with the dual purpose of removing hunger as a barrier to a happy life and educating children about food and nutrition.
Sunny’s Bee-utiful Food Adventure – WebGL Game
The platform’s centerpiece is an educational point-and-click game for children to teach them about growing and cooking food while fostering an interest in gardening and culinary skills.
The game was structured around three categories: Clean, Careful, and Confident, aligning with the curriculum provided by President’s Choice. It consisted of three recipes functioning as “levels,” each with distinct storylines and interactions required to complete the recipe.
Players begin the game experience by selecting their game cursor and whether they would like to begin by Growing and Cooking or going straight to Cooking a recipe. Each “level” had slightly different storylines and interactions that students had to go through to complete the recipe.
During the “Growing” portion of the game, the players select items they need to grow ingredients, where the ingredients are grown, and the steps to cultivate the plants and eventually gather them for cooking. Players can track where they are in the process by going to their checklist. The Tool Rack is where you can find the necessary tools to grow your ingredients.
Here, you select what you need to grow—carrots, tomatoes, or blueberries. Instructions and a Tool Checklist guide you along the way on what to search for and find within the Tool Rack. Items like a shovel and rake are obvious, but cleanliness and safety are part of the educational goals. So, Players are rewarded by using things like a Hat and Sunglasses for protection.
Players can earn achievements for making good decisions.
Clean UI and organized modal windows kept the user informed.
Players must prepare the soil, fertilize the ingredients, and sow the seeds to grow the ingredients.
It takes time to grow plants, so we educated users by explaining the process of growth and time through messaging and pop-up quizzes.
After the tomatoes are grown and harvested, it’s time to head indoors into the kitchen, but be sure to clean your tools!
Players must collect and prepare all the ingredients and tools needed to make the meal inside the kitchen. This may include grabbing items from the pantry or returning and getting something from the herb garden.
Players learn about various cutting techniques used in cooking.
They also go through the process of cooking and pureeing the ingredients before serving.
After serving the dish, players receive an overall score on how they did.
Power Full Kids Digital Dashboard and Content Management System
This platform is a content management system designed for educators and administrators to create learning content and student activities. It features a custom-built content management system that allows it to generate multimedia content, including images, calendars, trivia quizzes, and educational curricula. The administrator can use these building blocks to create learning content in a format similar to Google Slides, arranging the building blocks using a drag-and-drop system—however, as they see fit. This slide-based content is organized as themes, activities, foodways, and mealtime moments.
Content administrators begin by creating user accounts.
Within the system, they have a dashboard to assign roles to their team and set up student accounts. Within the dashboard, they can then manage media content and user activity performance reports.
The site also includes a full-featured calendar, which allows administrators, students, and teachers to schedule and edit events related to the content. Users are able to create, join, and edit groups to which these events can be scheduled on the calendar.
Mealtime Moments is centered around trivia cards, while Foodways includes an interactive WebGL globe and timeline that shows how, where, and when some of the foods we eat today have arrived on our plates over the years.
Lessons and lesson assessments are specific to a K-12 curriculum and center around an ingredient for students to learn about. Teachers will use educator notes as a guide to teaching the lesson and administering the lesson assessment.
Recipes can be featured to align with an ingredient being taught. There is also a log of all recipes for users to choose from, share, and meal-plan with their groups. Recipes include an ingredients list and measurements, which can be adjusted based on the number of people you’re cooking for.
Another site feature is the Plate Full Planner, which features an advanced front-end design and an advanced drag-and-drop grid system and carousel where users can add, remove, edit, and rearrange the meals on their meal plan.
The meal plan can then be pushed to the calendar, and a grocery list for all the ingredients can be provided.
Additionally, there are various administrative tools for reporting and testing students on the learning material, and a full-featured cloud-based file management system. We’ve created several systems in-house to handle the logic for storing the data in two languages and a notification propagation system to inform every user of activities from other people they’re in a group with.
Visual Appeal, Sunny the Mascot, and Reward Systems
The platform’s visual design was meticulously crafted to stimulate curiosity and create a welcoming atmosphere.
Vibrant colors, friendly characters, and animated elements were incorporated to engage young learners’ imaginations.
The platform’s overall appeal is contributed to by the imagery of fruits, vegetables, and friendly characters like Sunny the Bee.
The introduction of Sunny, a bee mascot, proved an important addition to the experience.
Sunny encapsulated the program’s mission and values, becoming a beloved guide for children throughout their learning journey. Sunny’s role within the program expanded throughout the experience’s development. Additionally, a reward system was implemented to celebrate achievements. As users complete lessons, assignments, and games, they earn badges, points, and recognition. These rewards create a sense of accomplishment, motivating continued exploration and learning.
Animated Spot to Launch the Platform
As the team progressed, they produced various print materials featuring Sunny and crafted an engaging 15-second animated spot to tease the platform’s upcoming launch.
