For those looking for more resources of good learning out there for their kids at home, here is a great one from Disney and the amazing learning resource Khan Academy.
By the way, if you have older kids, all of Autodesk's software that Disney uses to design their parks, rides, and animated films are free to teachers and students around the world at https://www.autodesk.com/education/home with some curriculum. There is also the powerful but free cloud based Tinkercad for 3-100 year old kids.
One-of-a-Kind Learning Experience from Disney Imagineers
Welcome to Imagineering in a Box!
Imagineering in a Box is designed to pull back the curtain to show you how artists, designers and engineers work together to create theme parks. Go behind the scenes with Disney Imagineers and complete project-based exercises to design a theme park of your very own.
Lesson 1: Build your own world
This lesson addresses the question: where do you want to go? It introduces the idea of experiential storytelling and the difference between an amusement park and a theme park. We’ll explore how storytelling and theme impact every decision made in the design of a land and how they engage all senses.
You'll walk out of this lesson with a theme and high concept for a land of your own design along with a mood board and map that conveys the land.
Exercise requirements: All activities can be done with physical materials.
Time requirement: 2 hours minimum
Lesson 2: Build your own attractions
This lesson addresses the question: what do you want to do in your themed land? It introduces students to the range of possible attractions within a themed land with a focus on dark rides. It exposes the importance of theme and storytelling in attractions in general. Following the creative development process at Walt Disney Imagineering, students envision and design their own dark ride. This includes both the artistic (beat sheets, models) and engineering (throughput, footprint) aspects of ride design.
You'll walk out of this lesson with a beat sheet (bullet point summary), a digital layout and a physical model of your attraction.
Exercise requirements: Includes activities that are computer based and activities that require the use of physical materials.
Time requirement: 2 hours minimum
Lesson 3: Build your own character
This lesson addresses the question: who do you want to meet in your land or attraction? (Who lives there?) The lesson introduces a variety of ways that Walt Disney Imagineering brings characters to life and explores the process of character development through character sheets, performance, costume design, armatures, actuation and control (with a focus on animatronics).
You'll walk out of this lesson with a character sheet, a costume, a simple physical armature design and a digital actuated armature.
Exercise requirements: Includes activities that are computer based and activities that require the use of physical materials.
Time requirement: 2 hours minimum
LearnAbout this course
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Welcome to Imagineering In a Box
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Intro to creating worlds
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Thinking about the story of a land
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Exercise 1: Your own land
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The theme of a land
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Exercise 2: Theme
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Layout
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Exercise 3: Layout
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Designing buildings for a land
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Exercise 4: Building design
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Landscape
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Exercise 5: Landscape and plant life design
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Materials
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Exercise 6: Materials
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Graphics
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Exercise 7: Graphics and color
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Sound
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Exercise 8: Sound design
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Taste and Smell
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Exercise 9: Design a menu
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Mood board
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Exercise 10: Mood board
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Lesson 2: Designing attractions
Introduction to attraction design
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Story within attractions
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Exercise 1: Thrill and story
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Dark Rides
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Lesson 2: High concept
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Blue sky
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Exercise 3: Blue sky
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Storyboards
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Exercise 4: Storyboards
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Pitching ideas
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Exercise 5: Pitching
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Ride systems
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Exercise 6: Choose your ride system
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Attraction layout
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Exercise 7: Paper layout
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Ride capacity
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Exercise 8: Ride simulator
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Scale models
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Exercise 9: Scale model
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Lesson 3: Bringing characters to life
Introduction to character design
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Character types
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Exercise 1: Who is your character?
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Costumes
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Exercise 2: Costumes
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Character sheets
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Exercise 3: Character Sheet
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Armatures
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Exercise 4: Prototype armature
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Actuators
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Exercise 5: Digital armatures
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Controlling an animatronic character
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Exercise 6: Control
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Educator's guide
