“Design Explorers” or why we created a design thinking program for parents and kids
We imagine that most of you share our aspirations as parents. We want to spend quality time with our children, have fun and enjoy our moments together, but also learn new things. In the end, it’s about raising successful children, prepared for all kinds of challenges in life.
And it turns out that it’s not so easy. Our time with the kids is never enough; we often don’t know what to really do with it, and it would be nice if it’s something meaningful; on top of that, we have to squeeze it in with everything else going on in our lives.
It could be really complicated — unless it isn’t.
The road so far
We are Tsveti and Georgi — a family with two kids, Sonny (6 y.o.) and Annie (4 y.o.) and the creators of Red Paper Plane. Many of you already know us, some of you will meet us for the first time. Two weeks ago, we shared our journey towards a new activity with our kids, designed by us in response to the parenting anxieties described above.
During the last 2 years and a half we went through many trials, errors, successes and failures in the making of our missions —engaging, ready-made projects for the home and educational environments created with design thinking. With the missions we discovered a great format for parents and kids age 4 to 10. However, we needed to find a really good way to offer it to our customers, so it can achieve its true purpose — truly meaningful time with our kids, building skills for life.
Skills and habits
When discussing 21st century skills, we often mean things like problem solving, teamwork, empathy, critical thinking, creativity and communication. We already know that early childhood age is the best time to foster them.
And how can we tell if we have truly acquired a skill? When we form a habit — when we use it instinctively, without thinking if, why and how we do it. Parenting is one of those stages in life, when we rethink our own habits and create new ones in our children.
However, this is often a difficult, time-consuming process — we need perseverance, repetition and help to make it through and to honestly say to ourselves, “I’ve done a good job.”
Creating habits is directly linked to how and when we interact with our children. This is why we’re offering a new way to do it — a program with quality, structured and fun content to help you make the most of your daily time with the kids, however short it may be.
“Design Explorers” — a new experience for parents and kids
Raising young innovators and creators shouldn’t be rocket science. That’s why Red Paper Plane’s missions are now part of a full-fledged program for parents and 4–10 y.o. kids, aiming to shape lifelong habits and skills.
Following many observations, discussions and work with kids and parents who played our missions, we understood what matters to them. Here are the most important lessons we learned and integrated into our new “Design Explorers” program:
- Make it regular — parents want to have a project ready for the next few days, have everything in order and be able to easily plan their week around it. Here’s why our missions will come out every Monday to kick off your week in a great way.
- Offer diverse challenges — today you want be an astronaut, tomorrow — a flag designer, later on — to find out more about the Chinese New Year or to make our evening commute more exciting. Our kids’ drive to explore the world around them and the world at large is limitless! This is why we decided to expand the missions and go beyond professions — now we will also have design challenges related to everyday situations, global events and local holidays.
- Repetition-friendly — kids love repeating an activity over and over again, because of their innate desire to do better —and this can’t always be achieved with books or toys. This is why parents love our easy to use PDF mission format — you can always adapt to your kid’s ideas or wishes, print out a mission as much as you want and take it to a whole new outcome.
- Skills and process are key — the debate on the jobs of tomorrow and artificial intelligence excites everyone, especially parents. To reflect this, we continue to focus on developing the skills helping our kids become successful and confident people from very early age. Adding to that, we observe a growing interest in design thinking — not surprising, given its role as a world-leading method for innovation, problem solving and discovering new opportunities.
- Tackle screen time — ”smart” games for kids at home are becoming increasingly popular. With them, however, worries over screen time increase exponentially. Our missions let parents engage their kids either outside the virtual realm or with “smart” screen time — when we are looking at something online or searching for information, it’s always in the context of the mission we’re currently playing.
- Foster a community — one of our parents described the need for a community around our missions very well — “to have company on the road of parenthood”. Here’s why we are creating a private space in our program where we can discuss things we care about, follow great articles on education and child development and share our experience from the missions (there are lots of other places to banter on essential parenting topics, like sick days, new clothes, tutoring lessons and many others.)
- “Parenting starts with parents” — parents often share their need for self-care, which goes beyond their time with the kids. Here’s why we will publish tips, tools and design thinking techniques on our Medium page, helping you in our own personal development.
How does the program work?
Imagine this: a dedicated creative team, always at your side, who you can count on to deliver exciting challenges, ideas and inspiration for your family time on a regular basis. How does that work?
- Subscribe! —you can do it quickly and easily from here. It’s a monthly subscription (оf course, you can unsubscribe anytime.) More than one kid? Surprise, you don’t need an upgrade or a second/third/fourth subscription!
- You get a new mission every Monday —it’s your new family time ritual at the start of the week. Each mission has a unique challenge, related to a profession, an interesting topic, an everyday experience or a current event (yes, we often design the missions in the week before publishing them). Missions can vary in length — some are an hour or two, while others take a few consecutive days to complete. We believe in the power of surprises — you will find out exactly what you’re going to get when it arrives in your inbox.
- The mission arrives online — most often, you’ll have a well-designed and handy PDF diary attached to it, ready to print and play. The mission diaries contain a description of the challenge, plan for the days and separate pages for each stage, as well as accessories and a place to complete the mission by outlining the young designer’s hand (the kids like that a lot.)
- You become part of the community — you also get access to our online community, allowing you to get in touch with other parents, discuss timely topics, share your experience with the missions and give us feedback and ideas.
- Next Monday you get a new mission! And since the program doesn’t have a fixed completion period, you get to play as many missions as you want to!
It’s important to note that the “Design explorers” program exists and grows only with the support of the parents who subscribe to it. Our only source of funding are the programs we provide, so if you decide to join in, you know you are helping us move forward. This is why we are so happy to get supported by people who value their family time and wish to grow together with their kids.
What do we want to give you with the program?
- For children —ways to explore the world through many different topics; creative confidence in an environment of continuous change; problem-solving abilities by using tools and techniques adapted for their age; openness to the new, the different and the less known; meaningful and enjoyable time with their parents.
- For parents — calm and planned time with their children; creative challenges, exciting for all family members (adults included); developing a multitude of skills with just one format; the ability to follow your child’s development through the mission diaries; tools for our personal development as people and parents that actually work.
Come fly with us!
Mondays are very special days for our parents. Amongst all the emails, calls and notifications in this, how to put it mildly, particular weekday, there is one message making them smile.
It arrives as an email from Red Paper Plane — and gives them a nudge to try the new family challenge. They open it impatiently to discover the topic of the design journey they’ll be exploring with their children this week. They also smile as they print the mission diary, picturing the faces of their little explorers rummaging through their bag later in the evening. In fact, they woke up in the morning asking impatiently:
“Mom, it’s Monday, isn’t it? It’s mission time, right? What are we having this time — car designer, photographer, meteorologist? Are we flying the spaceship on our way back home? Maybe we’ll have the Olympics again soon, so we can make our own family sports team? Or we can give five ideas what to do if we get bored?
“Mission time!” is our secret code for meaningful and fun time together. And it could be yours, too.
If you choose to subscribe to “Design Explorers”, nothing extraordinary will happen to the world.
But in your world, each Monday will be a bit more special. Week after week, you will build the habit of exploring design challenges together, show empathy, follow a process, look for ideas, try out solutions, show patience as well as courage. Monday after Monday, month after month, you can raise a little innovator, able to solve all kinds of problems and imagine the future by creating it.
Which is pretty extraordinary, isn’t it?
Red Paper Plane is creating innovative learning programs with design thinking for kids
age 4–10 —”Design Explorers” for the home and “Design Champions” for educational environments.
