The US Mint calls money “history in your pocket.”

It’s true. Every bill or coin tells a story by showing an important figure, or perhaps one of the 50 states. Let’s give you a money quiz.

1. The color green is associated with money. Are dollars printed with green ink?

Not anymore. At http://to.pbs.org/1ai7uQk you can learn all about the special paper, and multiple colors of ink used to make latest bills. You can explore some of the other hidden ingredients, such as microprinting that makes bills harder to copy.

2. T/F Some new bills are in 3D.

At http://cnnmon.ie/16QnBnS CNN explores the new $100 bill with all sorts of technology, including a 3-D security ribbon and color-shifting ink that changes from copper to green when the bill is tilted. At the Federal Reserve we found an interactive bill http://1.usa.gov/HrWOIv that lets you explore the new features.

3. Oh no, my dog chewed up my $5.00 bill. Is it still good?

Yes as long as you have more than half (51%). Just take it to a bank and they may give you a new one. Visit http://1.usa.gov/18H2rsi to learn the rules.

4. What is the most valuable United States coin?

Go to http://aol.it/17vI2g6 to see a 1849 solid gold Double Eagle. The $20 coin is now worth $20 million!

5. I want to start a state quarter collection.

At http://1.usa.gov/18Kle63 you can learn about the US Mint’s 50 State Quarters Program. Each quarter was produced for only 10 weeks, and will never be produced again.

DID YOU KNOW: The US Mint uses a standard washer and dryer to make coins clean and shiny.

See a penny on the ground? Pick it up! Next, you need a “coin folder” that contains round cutouts for each year.

They cost about $4 (or 400 pennies) and are sold in stores like Whitman publishing http://bitly.com/17C7kXB

QUARTER MAP ($9 from Amazon.com) http://amzn.to/1aPcfVV

Applications

Here are two sites with some fun games you can play to test your money skills

http://www.funbrain.com/cashreg/index.html

http://www.kidsmathgamesonline.com/money.html

———————————————————————————————————————————————— LittleClickers.com (this page and the associated web site) is sponsored by Computer Explorers. Neither Children’s Technology Review (publisher of LittleClickers) or Computer Explorers has any vested interest in any of the sites listed on this page. Librarians and teachers are permitted to copy this page for non-profit use. To report a bad link, use this form, or contact us. Copyright 2018, Children's Technology Review.

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We’ve all seen, and certainly stepped on, those famous sharp cornered LEGO blocks. But where did they come from, and what can you make with them? Let’s test your brain, with some LEGO trivia.

1. True or False: The first plastic inter-locking brick was made in Denmark. The answer is False according to http://www.hilarypagetoys.com, where you can learn the about an English toy inventer named Hillary Page who designed a self locking brick (right) nine years earlier than the first LEGO.

2. Are LEGOs based on the English or Metric system?  According to http://bit.ly/11VmmBP the Danish version is based on the metric system. Hillary Page’s design was English based.

3. What does the word “lego” mean? At Neatorama.com http://bit.ly/10IsKde you learn that “lego” is made from two Danish words leg (play) and godt (well). If you take the first two letters from each world, you have lego, a word that is nearly always spelled in capital letters. Interestingly the Latin translation means “I put together”.

4. What is the biggest thing ever made with LEGOs? At www.geeknaut.com http://bit.ly/10wEHZp you can see a 102 foot tower made of 500,000 LEGOs. You can also see a LEGO printer, a full sized car and an iPhone.

5. LEGOs are made of plastic. But what kind of plastic?  At 3D Printing for Beginners http://bit.ly/10wUa6T you can learn that LEGOs are made of Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene or ABS for short. It is a material that is strong and resilient but it is not biodegradable.

6. How many LEGOs are there?   At http://natgeotv.com.au/tv/megafactories/lego-facts.aspx you can learn that about 400 billion LEGO blocks have been produced since 1949, about 1140 per second. If all the LEGO bricks were to be divided equally among a world population of six billion, each person would have 62.

7. How Strong are LEGOs? Said another way, if you stacked LEGOs on top of one another, how tall could you make the stack before the LEGO on the bottom crumbles? According to a study reported in the BBC http://bbc.in/12lpWFU the tower would have to be 375,000 bricks to cause the bottom brick to collapse, which represents a stack 11,781 ft tall. The Empire State Building is 1,250 feet tall. That’s 9.4 Empire State Buildings!

8. What is the most expensive lego? At CNET http://cnet.co/YISl so you can see a photo of a single LEGO brick worth $14,500 dollars, up for auction at www.brickenvy.com. It’s made of solid gold, and was given to a valuable employee who obviously thought that $14,500 would be better.

APPLICATIONS

1. Make a LEGO Maze for your car. Make sure you include turns and dead ends.

2. Make a lego photo frame.

Remember to make a pyramid shaped holder using Lego blocks on the back so your frame stand up, and use colors to compliment your photo. You can glue your LEGOs together with plastic cement (commonly called model glue). According to, http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Immortalize_Your_Lego_Creations, Crazy glue works well.

———————————————————————————————————————————————— LittleClickers.com (this page and the associated web site) is sponsored by Computer Explorers. Neither Children’s Technology Review (publisher of LittleClickers) or Computer Explorers has any vested interest in any of the sites listed on this page. Librarians and teachers are permitted to copy this page for non-profit use. To report a bad link, use this form, or contact us. Copyright 2018, Children's Technology Review.

Cyberchase Tangrams

At the PBS Kids Cyberchase site, Tangrams is our favorite game. By moving shape tiles around you can copy designs and make buildings and creatures. All it takes is a keen eye and steady hand. http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/math-games/

Crossword Puzzle Maker

At this handy site, you can quickly and easily make your own crossword puzzles to print out. Just enter your words and clues and the site makes the blank crossword and even an answer sheet, too. You can make puzzles to study with, or just for fun; see if you can stump your mom or dad! http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/CrissCrossSetupForm.asp

Put some thrill in the drill!

Subjects like math, reading and geography have more facts than MacDonalds has french fries.

It is good to practice these facts, and if you can have fun while you do, well, that’s all the better. Here’s a collection of free websites to put some thrill in the drill.

Hate math? Visit MATH DOODLES www.mathdoodles.com

Artist and computer programmer Daren Carstens loves math. He says “I am a lover of math…and interactive games and puzzles can make even the most advanced ideas understandable.” Daren designed Math Doodles to help you discover how fun and playful math can be. Hint: Try to race against the timer for your best time. Best for 2nd grade-up.

Are you a good profreader? Find out at THE EDUCATION PLACE

www.eduplace.com/edugames.html

Six games let you pick your own grade level, and then practice spelling, reading and geography skills and facts. This site comes from a textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin. Don’t miss the brain teasers! Best for grades 1-5.

Practice parts of speech, with MAD LIBS

www.penguinputnam.com/static/packages/us/yreaders/madlibs/madlibsgame2.html

Give me a noun______. Now give me an adjective _____. Once you plug in about a dozen of these prompts, you’ll see your words, woven into a story. We can’t think of a better way to learn the parts of speech. For grades 2-up.

Give Your Brain some Fun, at FUNBRAIN www.funbrain.com

One of the oldest and best collections of free games has been helping millions of kids sharpen their skills over the years. This site has had many owners; the latest is Pearson Education, another textbook publisher. For grades 1-up.

Are you a geo-champ? Find out at GEOBEE!

www.nationalgeographic.com/geobee

Every year, thousands of kids compete to see who knows the most geography facts. To see how you rate, try one of the fast paced multiple choice tests at National Geographic Kids. For grades 4-9.

Looking for some fun games? With the help of our friends at the recent IDC conference, we came up with this list of the best kids’ Internet games that combine fun with learning. They are free, but you’ll want to make sure your browser has the latest version of Flash or Shockwave.

Boohbah Online (http://pbskids.org/boohbah))

Get your little brother or sister and go to this fun, zany site that encourages exploration using the characters from the PBS show. You can program dances or make beautiful patterns. Best for ages 2-6.

Games at Sesame Workshop (www.sesameworkshop.org)

You’ll find lots of different kinds of games, featuring Sesame Street characters. The best ones are the letter searches (where you try to find hidden letters in pictures), and the dot to dot puzzles. Best for ages 3-5.

LEGO JunkBot (http://www.lego.com/eng/create/activities/junkbot2/Default.asp?x=x)

One of the oldest logic puzzles on the web, this is both fun and easy to play. You goal is to drag and drop LEGO blocks into place in order to get a robot from one side of the screen to the other by building ramps. Warning — the hard levels take some brainpower. Ages 3-up.

Mr. Picasso Head (www.mrpicassohead.com)

Drag and drop abstract art elements — all inspired by the famous artist Picasso — onto a canvas, where they can be resized, turned, changed color, and so on. You can even sign the painting, using a cool Picasso font. Best for ages 4-up.

Learning Vocabulary Can Be Fun (www.vocabulary.co.il)

Are you good at spelling? Are you ready for some bigger, hard words? This site contains a version of concentration, a word search game, a flashcard-like quiz, and a game of hangman. There are a nice selection of word lists to choose from. Ages 6-up.

PopCap Games (www.popcap.com)

If you like Tetris and Bejeweled, you’ll like this collection of eight quality games. Don’t miss Bookworm, a timed spelling game where you need to link words together. We also liked Mummy Maze, a strategy game where you must outwit an approaching mummy by carefully planning your moves. Best for ages 6-up.

Soda Play (www.sodaplay.com)

We’re not sure what to make of this site, except that is fun to play with. It lets you create moving stick-and-ball designs, by playing with variables that control how each part interacts. The result is moving design — an interesting merger between art and math. It is very cool, but limited in what you can do unless you are into programming. Ages 8-up

GAME DESIGNER?

What do you want to be when you grow up? How about a game designer?
If this sounds right for you, here are some steps to prepare yourself, right now.

STEP 1. Play a lot of games!

According to experienced designers, like Elliot Olson of THQ (video, top right), play a wide variety of games on a lot of different platforms. Start keeping track of the things you like don’t like. Ask, “If I was going to redesign this game, what would I do differently?”

Also, watch our interview with Sam Roberts, Festival Director of IndieCade (International Festival of Independent Games) during E3 2010, discussing what types of games he feels are good for kids.”

STEP 2. Do well in school.

Guess what?  Being a game designer means being good at things, like art, music, math, and reading. Listen to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak describe a programming job, and you can see how math, problem-solving, and creativity mix together in programming.

Also watch and learn how education influenced different designers. Marc ten Bosch  has three different college degrees, and you can see how his education influenced the game he designed.

The team at Duck Duck Moose, who makes children’s apps, has wonderful cello music. That’s because one of the members of the design team has a music degree.

STEP 3. Start programming!

Or we could say, Scratching. Scratch is a free computer language that you can download, for either Mac or Windows computers. First, go to http://scratch.mit.edu and download the program. Next, watch the tutorial videos, to teach yourself the basics, like how to make a sprite move. See http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Video_Tutorials.

You can also program with regular game hardware. For the Nintendo DSi, use Flipnote Studio (http://bit.ly/bkvhME) to learn about animation, or visit Kerpoof (http://www.kerpoof.com) to program some stories. For the PS3, get a copy of LittleBigPlanet (http://bit.ly/b7Em7g), and for the Xbox 360, try Kodo (http://bit.ly/2k5Iph).

STEP 4: Publish an App!

Ready to start making money? Make an app for the either Apple or Android devices. Here’s how. For iPhones and iPod Touches, you’ll need a Macintosh and the Software Development Kit ($100, from http://developer.apple.com/ipad/sdk/ or free for universities). Use App Inventor for Android ($free, Google from http://bit.ly/cEJYBy) to make — and possibly sell — an app for Android phones. Next, start watching videos. Listen to how one artist/mathematician (video, top right) learned how to program by watching YouTube videos made by middle schoolers.

So what are you waiting for?  “Just do it!” said Jeremiah Slaczka, who made Scribblenauts for the Nintendo DS.

Jeff Braun, who started Maxis, and helped Will Wright publish SimCity, would agree. “Believe in yourself, and never take, ‘It won’t succeed’, for an answer.”

Quiz: If you want to be a game designer, which school subjects are the most important?  (Check all that apply.)

SCHOOL SUBJECTS:
o Art
o Science
o Writing & Language Arts
o Math
o Reading, Honors Literature
o Spelling
o Music and the fine arts
o Sports

HOBBIES & OTHER SKILLS:
o Ability to work with others
o Programming (C++)
o Building models
o Playing a wide variety of video games
o Reviewing apps and games, and picking them apart to find out what bothers you.

Did you check every single box? You should have, because making and selling video games uses a diverse set of skills, and you’ll be in a better position if you have a well-rounded education. It also helps to have experience with sports, art, and/or music. For example, if you love baseball, you’ll be in a much better position to create an accurate baseball simulation.

You also need to be able to work with others. Games are often designed by multi-national teams, so being able to take other people’s perspectives and communicate clearly is very important. Finally, remember that game design is not very fun or romantic. You might get stuck animating a game for weeks at a time. There’s also a lot of failure that you might have to experience before you have success. As Maxis co-founder Jeff Braun says, “never underestimate the value of persistence.”

Game Designer Videos

Visit Children’s Technology Review’s playlist , to view 17 select YouTube videos that deal with famous programmers of game designers.