Use this PlayTogether guide to learn how you can help your child turn Kingdom Rush 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 with your child about how the Planning, Organization, and Time Management thinking skills work, and why they are important for success in school and at home.

Set Gameplay Goals

Kingdom Rush is a single-player game, but still makes for a great experience for you and your child to share. You can either take turns between levels, offering one another strategic advice, or play the game separately on your own devices. An online version of the game is also available, making it easy for another player to enjoy the game. After looking over the gameplay goals listed below, work with your child to complete each one.

Gameplay Goals

• Upgrade all defense units to level 2.
• Defeat a Yeti.
• Get 15 stars to unlock a hero character.
• Complete five levels on Easy Mode.
• Complete three levels on Normal Mode.

Stop and Reflect

After you have played through the first five levels of Kingdom Rush, take a minute to pause the game and talk with your child about how the game exercises Planning, Organization, and Time Management.

• Explain to your child that larger maps require more planning and preparation than smaller ones. In the same way that a research paper requires more planning than a book summary, larger levels will need extensive analysis to combat the increased waves of enemies.

• With your child, brainstorm different planning strategies that will accomplish the same goal. In Kindgom Rush, there is more than one way to defend your map. Compare the strategies you used with your child, describing why you chose to take the actions you did.

• Explain how organizing units in Kingdom Rush involves some of the same strategies utilized on an actual battlefield. Discuss a famous battle, and the strategies that lead to victory and defeat. If your child is learning about a war in history class, Kingdom Rush can be a great teaching tool to make a history lesson more interactive.

• Create a mock map for your child. Allow your child to organize army figures that would best prevent advancement on the more "tactile" map.  Examine the parallels between this method and Kingdom Rush.

• Use a time limit for some of your child's activities like, finishing homework or completing household chores. Stress the importance of completing these tasks within a certain time frame - a skill that is honed in Kingdom Rush.

• Talk to your child about the best ways to split your time up while playing the game. Which enemies should be defeated with first? Are there certain towers and areas of the map that should be dealt before moving on to other aspects of the game?

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 Planning, Organization, and Time Management. Then take some time to introduce these Thinking Skills to your child.

Explain That: 

• Planning is the thinking skill that helps us to develop a systematic approach for setting and achieving goals. It helps us to do things step-by-step, and to complete long-term projects on time.

• Organization is the thinking skill that helps us to arrange and coordinate materials and activities in order to complete a task.

• 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.

Planning Activity

Anticipate needs. Plan together for what your child might need for school. Begin with a list of essential supplies such as pencils, notebooks, markers, backpack, and lunch box. Then list other materials or things she would like to bring to school and decide together which items to purchase. Gradually encourage your child to make these lists on her own. Encourage your child to think about how to determine the most important items to purchase.

Organization Activity

Organize by category. Encourage your child to be creative in choosing ring tones to remind him of a contact group or thinking of things that can be organized by category. For example, color-coded notebooks, folders, and book covers for school classes (i.e., math is green, science is red) can help your child to stay organized in school. Encourage him to find more interesting ways of organizing his belongings, so that he is engaged in the process. Ask him to elaborate about his organizational strategies.

Time Management Activity

Perform a time study. Choose a particular task with your child and estimate how long it should take to complete. Time it from start to finish, and use these results as a baseline for completing this chore. Then set gradually shorter time limits for completing the task. Help your child to determine methods of becoming more efficient at accomplishing the task.

Mathematics

In order to build and upgrade fortresses and units, players have to spend game currency. Players are given very little currency at the start of each game. They must strategically place towers are strategic points on the map. It is a good idea to save currency until a few waves of enemy attacks. Players will soon develop a sense of where to put their next unit -- putting their money to better use. Budgeting wisely is crucial to success in Kingdom Rush. Players who are overzealous and impetuous with their money will likely fail the level and have to retry. Players must also decide which units to upgrade. Cheaper upgrades may seem like the best strategy at the beginning, but it will leave them without much defense later on, when enemies impervious to some of the attacks pass through. Players will learn monetary conservation strategies that directly deal with mathematical concepts.