More Outdoor Winter Play, the Star Wars Way!

Since 1977, re-enacting scenes from Star Wars has been a fun outdoor activity for kids. Depending on where you live though, it might take a little more imagination for some moments!

If you live near a forest then it is easy to recreate the battle of Endor. If you live near swamps then you have an instant Dagobah for Jedi training with Yoda! If you happen have a sandy desert area nearby suddenly you can imagine you’re podracing on Tatooine or stealing the Millennium Falcon from Unkar Plutt on Jakku.

Mittens? I don't even need a jacket!

Then there’s winter…

A while back we looked at playing out the snowy scenes of Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back and parts of The Clone Wars. Since then, The Force Awakens has introduced several new “cool” scenes to kids who don’t mind a little cold weather.

Whether you get your lightsabers out and duel in the snow, or bring your action figures outside and hope they don’t get lost until spring, here’s a few ideas for more outdoor winter play the Star Wars way!

In the movie Rey, Finn and Kylo Ren face off in an epic winter lightsaber fight. Finn starts trying his skills with the lightsaber but it’s Rey who really challenges Kylo during the snowy battle.

Starkiller Base itself offers many wintery moments, from the crash of the Falcon to Han, Chewie and Finn trying to get inside. If you think the Force will keep you warm though, remember Han’s words there: “That’s not how the Force works!"

Or you could recreate General Hux’s passionate speech about the First Order, though you may need a lot of friends to be the Stormtroopers! Perhaps a few of the troops could be snowmen?

Do you want to build a snowtrooper?

The deleted scenes from The Force Awakens (available on the bluray) provide even more inspiration for fun, including a snow-speeder chase that did not make it into the final movie.

Here she'll wear a jacket!

May the Force be with you, however you play Star Wars this winter!

 

Read, You Must: These Aren't The Droids You're Looking For

The easiest way to describe Scholastic’s new LEGO Star Wars: These Aren't the Droids You're Looking For would be to call it a LEGO Star Wars take on the popular Where’s Waldo books (or Where’s Wally outside of North America). This “Search-and-Find” book puts you on the hunt, scouring 30 colourful pages of crowded Star Wars scenes looking for tiny, often hilarious, details or spotting differences from page to page.

IG-88's big scene!

The title and cover are correct: despite the close-up on C-3PO and R2-D2, those are not the droids you’re looking for. The title (famously spoken by Obi-Wan Kenobi as he tricked stormtroopers in Mos Eisley) refers to the fact that in each picture you are hunting for the bounty hunter droid IG-88. Good thing they provide a reference picture and info because IG-88 only appears briefly in Episode V among the other bounty hunters hired by Darth Vader to find the Millennium Falcon. It’s an obscure character to centre a 2014 children’s book around, but no matter, there’s plenty else to find once you’ve located the “evil droid”.

It should've been Where's WATTO!

Hey I found Wald! Oh, wrong guy?

The humour fits right in with the LEGO Star Wars TV shows and the more you scour these pictures the more funny bits there are to discover. Some of the gags are very clear while others are miniscule and almost hidden. 

Look hard enough at these detailed crowd scenes and you’ll spot gungans frozen in carbonite, wampas making snowmen, clone troopers reading Star Wars books and a LOT of pizza...from “Pizza Hutt”, of course. 

Even if you don’t want to put the effort into playing detective you can enjoy these action-packed, imaginative takes on famous Star Wars scenes.

LEGO Star Wars: These Aren't the Droids You're Looking For is a lot of fun and is recommended for ages 7 and up, but if your youngling is younger than that then I imagine they’d still get a lot of enjoyment out of this book. Perhaps any further such books could have a few more scenes. This one left me wanting more!

- Chris @SWKidscast

Ultimate Factivity Collection: Star Wars

"Not sure what a 'factivity' is, am I. Fun though, it is."

DK Publishing has a fun, new line of activity books for kids called the Ultimate FACTIVITY Collection. Titles in this series feature Spider-Man, LEGO Chima & LEGO City but most interesting here of course is the Star Wars book!

Ultimate Factivity Collection: Star Wars is 96 pages of Star Wars facts, trivia, games, puzzles, how-to-draw, and stickers galore - more than 500! Most of them have a place inside the book but there are many other “extra” stickers too. Like most DK books this one is filled with photos of the characters, costumes & creatures from the six Star Wars films but this is no mere “sticker book” - there’s plenty to read and do here thanks to authors David Fentiman and Sadie Smith.

There are pages for drawing Darth Vader, a lightsaber duel, and even designing the inside of the Sarlacc creature from Return of the Jedi. There’s also a place for you to create your own starfighter and planet and to write your own Star Wars tales.

The book contains a “Journey Across Naboo” two-page spread like a board game and has many trivia tidbits about Padmé & Jar Jar’s home-world. Unfortunately it isn’t a fold-out or tear-out page so actually playing it would be challenging. You’d have to have something heavy holding the book open or carefully cut the pages out.

If you’re looking for a good rainy-day activity book, or a collection of new Star Wars trivia to quiz your friends, check out the Ultimate Factivity Collection: Star Wars.

Further reading: for more Star Wars drawing fun check out Draw Star Wars: The Clone Wars and

You Can Draw: Star Wars

For more activities see our reviews of Star Wars Folded Flyers and Star Wars Thumb Doodles.

Did You Know? Star Wars activity books have been around almost as long as Star Wars itself! Here's a few classics from 1978-79!

FAN EXPO Vancouver: Part II MORE Star Wars fan fun!!

Our 2nd day at FAN EXPO Vancouver was a blast and chock full of Star Wars fun! (To read about the first day click here).

Without the makeup she didn't recognize Ray Park (Darth Maul)!

For starters we had a brief chat with actor/stuntman/martial arts expert Ray Park aka. Darth Maul from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace! Yesterday was just a handshake but today we got a picture and chatted a little bit about martial arts and child development.

Did you know this Sith apprentice to Darth Sidious was once an instructor for parent & tot martial arts classes? I sure didn't!

Then we made our way to the LEGO booth to see the mural in all it's finished glory! Yesterday it looked like this but today it was completed. A close inspection was in order...

The highlight of the day though was Star Wars Kids Hour put on by volunteers from the 501st Legion & Rebel Legion. Basically the kids did various Star Wars-themed games (mostly bean-bag tosses) and then were entered in a draw for great prizes including toys and DK Star Wars books.

Plenty of costumed kids were there to play.

Receiving her orders from the Empire!

"Great shot, Kid! That's one in a million!"

Stretching to pin the tail on the very cute Tauntaun!

Dangerous for the Empire to encourage this, don't you think?

Some of the hard-working volunteers that made the event great!

Young Clone trooper claiming his prize.

Thank you to all the fun Star Wars fan families we met over the weekend, thanks to the 501st & Rebel Legions for making the day extra fun for kids and thanks to FAN EXPO Vancouver for a wonderful weekend. See you next year!

Skywalking in a Winter Wonderland: Outdoor Play the Star Wars Way!

Get outside and enjoy the winter weather, Star Wars style! There are plenty of moments to re-enact in the snow. Imagining being on The Empire Strikes Back's "remote ice world" of Hoth was a common part of outdoor winter play for me. Due to our winters, Hoth seemed the most familiar location among all the exotic locations of the galaxy far, far away.

Of course we didn't have AT-AT walkers, wampas or tauntauns, but we had plenty of snow and imaginations. Snow forts could easily become Echo Base, or the rebel trenches or even the wampa cave. Hanging upside down like Luke was a little trickier though!

The battle of Hoth is one of the coolest (hehe) scenes ever presented on film, but did you know Hoth is not the only icy place to play in the Star Wars Galaxy?

Jude Watson's 2001 children's novel Jedi Quest: The Path to Truth introduced a new icy planet called Ilum to the Star Wars Expanded Universe. There a chilly young Anakin seeks a crystal to create his lightsaber as part of his training, just as Jedi trainees had done for generations before him.

If this sounds familiar to you, you may remember in The Clone Wars when the Jedi Younglings travel to Ilum to seek their own crystals in the ice caves. In The Gathering (episode 6, season 5) Ahsoka & Yoda instruct six young Jedi (including my favourite Gungi the Wookiee!) on what they must do and face within the ice caves to retrieve their very own crystals as a rite of passage for Jedi.

"Cold we ALL are. Complain you will not."

In the earlier Star Wars: Clone Wars "micro-series", 3 mini-episodes (Chapter 14-16) featured Jedi Master Luminara Unduli guiding her Padawan Barriss Offee to construct her own lightsaber with a newly-aquired crystal. Things go horribly wrong when Separatist droids sneak in and try to destroy the sacred temple among the ice caves. Yoda, Padmé, C-3P0 & R2-D2 must brave the cold and face the invisible droids to rescue them.

"Frightful, the weather outside is. Delightful, a fire would be."

Once you're done imagining you're a Jedi on a sacred quest to find your own lightsaber crystal on Ilum, you can take a pretend hyperspace jump over to yet another ice planet in the Star Wars Galaxy to the "bleak, snow-covered planet" of  Orto Plutonia.

In The Clone Wars first season (Episode 15: Trespass), Anakin and Obi-Wan travel to Orto Plutonia to investigate what happened to a Republic base but find themselves in a conflict between the Pantoran military and the furry native Talz species. Peace is eventually reached but not without a price.

For some reason Santa went with reindeer instead.

So if you happen to live somewhere snowy, you can envision yourself riding a Narglatch snow cat with the Talz or zipping over the ice on a Freeco speeder bike too!

UPDATE: December 2014
Once we find out who this guy is and what he's doing in a dark, snowy forest there's whole new scenes to play out & have fun in the snow!

Just because it's cold and snowy outside, don't let that get in the way of your Star Wars play. There's plenty to re-enact or create yourself in the wintery Galaxy. 'Tis the season!

"I'm going to stink for weeks!"

Just an aside: I've never understood how Han Solo's Tauntaun (a native species of Hoth) freezes while Han himself and Luke can survive the freezing conditions. Any thoughts? Leave a comment below!

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