Use this PlayTogether guide to learn how you can help your child to turn Angry Birds Go! play time into a positive learning and relationship-building experience. To learn more about why playing games with your children is so important, check out our Science of Play page.

Talk Before You Play

Take a minute to talk to your child about how the Flexibility, Focus, Time Management and Working Memory thinking skills work, and why they are important for success in school and at home.

Set Gameplay Goals

Angry Birds Go! is a single-player game, so take turns attempting each objective by passing the mobile device back and forth. After reading over the Thinking Skills pages, team up with your child to take turns completing levels in an effort to achieve the objectives listed below.

Gameplay Goals:

• Upgrade your car's top speed, acceleration, handling and strength each by one level.
• Place first in the first level's group racing.
• Win a versus mode match on medium.
• Use the sling shot upgrade for a better start.
• Defeat the pink bird three times to unlock her as a character.

Stop and Reflect

After you have unlocked the pink bird as a character, pause the game and talk with your child about how the game is exercising thinking skills.

• Challenge your child to finish every objective in all four levels in a series before moving on to the next series – even once it’s unlocked. This will help your child keep a singular goal in mind, rather than get caught up with the varying objectives of new series of levels. Helping your child to concentrate and complete each level in a series will instill positive habits in goal-directed persistence and overall focus.

• Discuss ways your child can work similar goal-directed persistence strategies into doing his or her homework. Take things one subject at a time, completing work methodically, subject by subject. It's a good way to stay on track and finish an entire assignment before moving on to the next task.

• Help your child explore the terrain, with its angles and obstacles, that accompanies each turn in practice mode before attempting to complete a race's time trail. Once he’s had a few runs through, your child will be better able to time speed boost power-ups with the approaches of straightaways and anticipate difficult turns. Explain how using Working Memory skills to memorize a track can, in turn, improve Time Management skills. What are some examples of how Working Memory can improve Time Management at school and at home?

• Once your child gets accustomed to Angry Birds Go!, talk about ways to become a better racer in general. Change up challenges and racing styles by introducing new levels that require a different approach race-to-race. Employing different strategies helps racers meet a wider number of goals and challenges. Ask your child to think of some ways in which similar adaptive thinking and flexibility skills are useful in the real world.

Our Make it Work activities are designed to transform your child’s gameplay into real-world improvements in thinking and academic skills. If you’re just getting started with LearningWorks for Kids, we suggest you try them all to find which are the best for you and your child. 

Introduce the Thinking Skills

Read over the pages for Flexibility, Focus, Time Management, and Working Memory, and then take some time to introduce these Thinking Skills to your child.

Explain That:

• Flexibility is the thinking skill that helps us adapt to new situations, learn from mistakes and change what we are doing in order to deal with different challenges.
• Focus is the thinking skill that helps us maintain our attention and effort, start tasks and work through distractions.

• Time Management is the thinking skill that helps us complete tasks on time, finish things more quickly and be efficient and aware of our use of time and effort.

• Working Memory is the thinking skill that helps us to recall and retain information in our minds while working, follow multi-step directions, and solve problems in our heads.

Flexibility Activity

Get unstuck. Inflexibility can prevent you from finding a range of correct solutions to a particular problem. One way to help your child see how this behavior results in avoidable frustration is to have her help you out of a situation where you feel stuck. Using the computer is an ideal opportunity for this type of hands-on illustration. Next time you have a problem, keep repeating the incorrect activity or an ineffective remedy, then blame the machine. Tell your child it is the computer that is stuck. Most children are more knowledgeable about computers than their parents and will be able to demonstrate several ways to fix the problem.

Focus Activity

Encourage your child to assess what helps the most. Before homework, chores or even favorite activities, ask your child what would help her to complete the chosen task. Ask her to think about the tools, time frame and settings that would encourage planning skills and that would reduce conflict. Advise her to learn to ask these questions of herself on a regular basis.

Time Management Activity

Set reasonable time limits for tasks and then work to reduce them. For example, state the expectation that your child can unload the dishwasher or clear off the table within 15 minutes. As you work towards decreasing the limit to ten minutes, praise any efforts and attempts to complete this task more efficiently.

Working Memory Activity

Go slow, but when necessary, go fast. Many individuals with Working Memory difficulties need a bit more time to process directions that are given to them, whether they be verbal or written. Allow your child extra time to process this information and also allow extra time for task completion. However, going fast can occasionally be helpful as well. For children who are only able to retain information for a short period of time, you may want to encourage them to complete two to three tasks very quickly so they don’t forget what they are supposed to do.