What Is IF…?

15, Feb

0
By IYC

IF… is a fun, adventure game that helps your child become more emotionally intelligent.

While your child navigates adventures and challenges in our imaginary town of Greenberry, we’re teaching proven life skills for your child’s well-being and success.

We all want happy, healthy and successful children. But what specific skills help our children get there? These skills have now been identified: they’re called Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) skills. They include: managing emotions like frustration and disappointment, showing empathy for others, persisting through failure, collaborating with others, and making good decisions. Research also proves that they can be taught.

Games have a unique power to motivate and engage children.

97% of school-aged children are playing games. Research also shows that playing video games opens the “learning centers” in children’s brains. The If You Can team has brought together some of the most successful video game creators in history with national experts in SEL to harness this potential. We’re using a game to teach life skills your children most need to thrive both in school and out of school.

We’ve designed our game to support the transfer of the skills learned in the game to “real life”.

Your children’s experience is pure fun game-play. They aren’t aware they are learning skills, tools and strategies to become more emotionally intelligent. At intervals in the game, characters encourage your children to stop playing and try out the skills and strategies they’ve been modeling. Tools like breathing exercises to calm down and “real life” win-win strategies to resolve conflicts are examples.

We also included a way for you to be involved.

Your personalized IF… app shows you what and how your children are learning. You tell us when you want to receive updates, so whenever it’s most convenient for you, you’ll receive the latest on what your children are doing in the game. You’ll see what skills your children are learning, as well as fun and effective ways you can help reinforce the learning. From simple discussion questions, to games, books and activities, you’ll be fully equipped with ways to bring everything from good listening and showing respect to collaborative problem-solving into your home.