Why Pokémon?

After my daughter discovered my husband’s old Pokémon cards, she dove into a love of Pokémon, watching the anime and reading all about it. We decided to take this love of Pokémon as a catalyst to practice academic skills and learning about our world as well as the world of these cute little pocket monsters from Japan.

What is Pokémon?

If you aren’t familiar with Pokémon, it all started out as a video game, followed by Manga/Japanese Comics, and an Anime series, a trading card game and today it is a huge media franchise selling all sorts of material featuring popular Pokémon. The Pokémon storyline is based off of a 10 year old boy Ash Ketchum that wants to be a Pokémon Master. He wants to catch all the Pokémon to bond with and train them to battle other Pokémon. He travels to the many lands in his world to catch new Pokémon and battle other Pokémon trainers in tournaments or gyms. There are many different types of Pokémon that have different traits and abilities that are useful to help people or battle other Pokémon. Most of these Pokémon mature through different life stages or “evolutions” as they battle and become stronger. Pokémon can be sorted into one or more different types based on their traits and abilities.

We centered our pokemon study around learning about the different pokemon types, their moves and abilities, and different human characters that are their trainers. Then we also learned about animals on earth, scientists that learned about the same topic, and a few Japanese cultural activities that relate to each type (since Pokemon started in Japan).

Disclaimer: We are using Pokemon as a launching point for exploring a vast collection of topics. You can explore these topics without getting into Pokemon. However, if your little is already into Pokemon. These activities can parallel and enrich their interest.