How To Train A Star Wars Fan

I  am a little fascinated by how my adorable boy is already SO in to Star Wars.  I looked back through the blog posts (including the one earlier this week) to create this easy step-by-step to training your very own precocious Star Wars kid. 

Step 1:  One or more parents needs to love Star Wars and want to share this love.  This is true for most shared passions, I suspect.  Here, this is Brent's thing.  He knows everything Star Wars and has some awesome Star Wars toys (more on that later).  I like Star Wars too.  This helps because if the other parent were resistant it would likely not work so well. 

Step 2: Having VERY cool toys helps.

February 15, 2010

Brent has a lot of VERY cool Lego Star Wars space ships.  He has probably at least a dozen (I suspect much more, but only a piece of the collection is ever assembled at a given time.  We're like the Smithsonian that way....).  The above and the Death Star assembled on Brent's desk are probably the coolest.  B has long admired, played with and even gotten to assemble some on occasion.  Also, Erik has some awesome figures that B gets to play with when we're over there which adds to the variety.

Steps 3 & 4.  Cartoons are cool--- as are light sabers.  In looking back at blog posts the early mentions in late 2009 and early 2010 focus on the Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Vol. 2  (or Vol 1, I suppose) and fun with light sabers . The cartoons are short and can easily been fast forwarded past anything approaching scary.  Kids just plan love swords and light sabers so this definitely should be part of the training.  Granddaddy brought cool ones back from Disney, but pretty much any given stick will do for some fun lightsaber play time.

Step 5 - Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy - Pop up books are awesome and this one is cooler than most.  Each page has subpages, cool creatures and (spolier alert) the last pages include battery powered lightsabers!  In the beginning, B would just follow along.  Now, he requests it in the mornings and can tell me what nearly everything is.

Step 6 - Mini-Figures are fun for everyone.  I happen to really like min-figures in Lego sets of all kinds.  I like people and these are very cute people.  When I buy Brent Lego Star Wars things, I'll admit I tend towards sets with multiple mini-figs.  They are also great for learning about the story (or canon generally---yes, they are serious folks).

August 23, 2010

Step 6: Try a movie - We started with Episode IV --- of course--- on July 4th, 2010, when B was roughly 3.5 years old.  He made it through most of it and claimed to like it.  No one forced him to stay when he was done with it.  Pics are cute.   Brent loved it, but was very chill about it like it was "just any other movie." (Which clearly it isn't given the number of versions of the movies we have in our cabinet).

Step 7:  Give it some time and then try another movie -- Of  course Episode V comes next.  We waited about two months until it seemed "right".  Same general process as above and similar spacing before the next one.  We have yet to introduce Episodes I-III and I'm not sure what Brent's plan is for that fiasco.  He has seen some of the cartoons related to them though.

Step 8: Video Games -  Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga (admittedly unsure if this is the exact version we have).  Erick bought this for B for Christmas last year and he was completely obsessed with it for probably a month at least.  It is hard and required a lot of help from Daddy, but they have played it all the way through (I think) and learned quite a few side lessons along the way.  It is quite the merge between small boy loves - Lego sets, Star Wars, + Video Game

Step 9: Toys of his own - Up until this point he had mostly played with Brent or Erik's Star Wars stuff.  Now, as per the earlier post, he has his own and plenty of it.  Most of this stuff is from Happy Meals or other comparable fast food give aways from a decade or more ago.  It has been living in Granddaddy's attic and is oh so happy to have a new home and oh so free to us.  Everyone is pleased.  He takes good care of them and stores everything as instructed.  He is eager to learn more about them and prepares questions for Brent on his return. 

April 19, 2011

Step 10:   Books, Music and Crafts - 

• No experience in our house is going to exist without books as an integral part.  The pop-up book above is a bit too delicate to live in B's room, but he has a cool one of his own:  Star Wars: A Scanimation Book: Iconic Scenes from a Galaxy Far, Far Away...  This is in frequent rotation and popular with both kids.  
• We also have sticker books which are somewhere between our crafts fun and the book collection at any given time.  We have, I believe, these three: Star Wars Ultimate Sticker Collection LEGO Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary,  and LEGO Minifigure Ultimate Sticker Collection.  The last one is actually all the Lego Minifigures, not just Star Wars -- and very popular.  B&N has occasional buy one get one free deals on these sticker books which is how we came to have them as well as  Tangled Ultimate Sticker Book  - despite never having seen that movie.   
• We also frequently listen to the Star Wars sound track and the Star Wars Pandora station.  M recognizes the themes already and will happily pipe up "Star Wars."  B can tie many of the songs to a scene or person whose theme it is from having played the video game.  Lots of fun and some good classical music in our day. 

There you have it!  Ten easy steps to training your kid in the ways of the Jedi.... or at least in consumer culture with a dash of good sci fi and family bonding.  We are glad to open the floor for questions and happy to provide consulting advice as you go through the training process. 

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