The story of the Treehouse lab that nearly didn't work. Animals, coalitions, one very stubborn giraffe, and the bit I had to throw out and start again.
Vote in the Zoo is the little lab in the Treehouse for younger kids. The idea is you meet six animal parties, pick who you'd vote for, and then see who has to work together to actually run the zoo.
It sounds simple. It was not simple.
The first version was just "pick your favourite animal." That was boring. It was basically a personality quiz with fur.
The second version had policies. The lions wanted more meat. The rabbits wanted more grass. The monkeys wanted the trees left alone. That was better. But every kid I showed it to just voted for the animal they liked best and ignored the policies entirely. Which, to be fair, is also how a lot of grown-ups vote.
The thing that made it actually work was coalitions. Once you finish voting, the zoo has to form a government. And no single animal has enough votes on their own. So the lions have to talk to the meerkats. The elephants have to talk to the penguins. Suddenly kids were going "wait, why would THEY work together?" and that is exactly the question I wanted them to ask.
The bit I threw out: I had a whole "the crocodiles are the media" section. It was too much. Younger kids don't need a media literacy sub-plot inside their zoo game. That idea got moved to a different lab.
The bit that nearly broke it: a giraffe. I could not, for the life of me, decide what a giraffe party would stand for. Tall policies? Long-term thinking? Neck rights? In the end I cut the giraffe. Sorry, giraffes.
The lesson, I think, is that a lab is not finished when you've added everything. It's finished when you've cut everything that wasn't pulling its weight. The giraffe was not pulling its weight.