San Juan High FBLA offers cure for tech zombies

by Kara Laws
For decades parents have battled their children’s summertime boredom. Keeping kids happy, learning, and not technology zombies is a real problem for many parents.
San Juan High School Future Business Leaders of America has set out with a solution for Blanding parents, a program called Play Unplugged.
Play Unplugged is a way to get your kids moving, get them outside, give them plenty of things to do, and make it fun.
Here’s how it works: 1. Parents sign up for free at WePlayUnplugged.com. 2. Parents pull up the list of local businesses participating. 3. Kids try to accomplish tasks set by local businesses.
Sounds simple, right? It gets better. For each task that a child accomplishes, they earn a badge. Each badge is worth a certain number of points.
These points can be traded in for rewards set by parents, used as a competition among friends, or celebrated at the annual FBLA Play Unplugged party at the end of the summer.
Parents can also create private profiles for each of their kids so they can keep track of badges, enter codes for points, and easily see what badges have been earned.
The goal is to collect all the badges that you can, earn the most points, and have the most incredible summer ever.
Tasks can be chosen by each business and can be anything. For instance, Zions Bank in Blanding awards the S’more Maker badge. To earn the badge, children simply need to make some s’mores and head to the bank to earn their prize.
Other local tasks include the Treasure Hunter badge from BCL Distributing, the Paper Pilot badge from Eagle Air Med, and the Screen Slayer badge from Redd’s Hardware.
The names sum up the tasks pretty basically. Detailed direction for each badge can be found at WePlayUnplugged.com. Currently, there are eleven local businesses participating.
Kids around Blanding are having a great time earning points. Local businesses are loving meeting new families and helping get kids out doing fun things.
More businesses can still join in on the fun! If a business visits WePlayUnplugged.com they can choose the badge they want at their place of business, assign a task, and have badges sent directly to their store front.
Sponsorship is only $100 to get kids up, moving, and having a great time. Businesses can also add their logos to the back of their badges for a little extra advertising.
Summer is already halfway over, which means this program is as well. Have your kids earned all their badges yet?