Hello Fantastic Families,
After an enlightening field trip today I thank those who chaperoned and offer appreciation for the very fine attention that our students gave to our presenters. Please compliment your children.
As part of the field trip we were given time to use our creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking in purposeful play with reusable and repurposed materials. The “play” session consisted mainly of kids interacting with each other and their materials in multi-modal, dynamic ways. Safety was, as always, a priority through the play session. There were opportunities for problem solving, engineering enterprise, negotiations, and collaborations. Labyrinths that referenced Mythology were created while models of imaginative launching machines and semi-realistic gymnastics studios took form. In the end, the “play” sessions reminded us that in a world dominated by schedules and absolutes, it is important to empower the innovative and collaborative internal lives of our children through invitations to create.
In class we have done this with many STEAM+ activities, the most recent of which challenged our students to use what they had learned through research about a given habitat, create that habitat in a manner that represented the key concepts found therein in teams, and present their learning and project to educate others.
Perhaps there is even more room to be made in out-of-school life for the benefits of play. Something to think about as you read through articles and papers that refer to play as a key educational tool that helps students construct a vision of themselves and functional tools of creators in a broad sense.
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