The Beta Super Power Maker is a toy that promotes doing philosophy with children. In contrary to conventional philosophy where students are passively exposed to existing philosophical concepts, philosophy with children is a safe space to create a form of desire or opportunity for children to explore and articulate what they have not said or even thought before.

One of the research insights showed that children of 4-6 year old loved imaginary play, and everything about super heroes and super power. Thus, Beta Super Power Maker was designed to help shift the children’s mind into an imaginary headspace where they can freely think about all kinds of super power they can create. It aims to create a playful space that helps children feel more comfortable and confident in exploring new ways of thinking. Through the super power building activity, the aim is to spark playful philosophical talk between grown-ups and children in a judgement free way.

The Beta Super Power Maker comes with super problem prompts to help set up a scenario for the play. The machine has two sides to encourage pairs to play together. Sliders are added to get children think about how super powers can be more than just a binary value. What if it could be a combination of different intensities from various types of super attributes? Each person can create super powers in their own unique way, promoting dialogues from different perspectives. Or maybe, try combining powers and prompt interesting dialogues from both sides.

The machine comes with a moral compass to provide a tangible understanding of setting their own moral values. This pairing hopes to open up a playful dialogue about power and morality, and also learn about different ways people perceive values in their life.

Last but not least, the machine has a friendly parental warning that reminds them to refrain correction or judgements of what the children is expressing . It is important to remember the ultimate playing goal is not about reaching any right or wrong conclusion, but empowering children to feel comfortable exploring and expanding their own thinking freely with others.