The P Word

This summer I'm reading and commenting on the book What If Everybody Understood Child Development? by Rae Pica.

Chapter 13: "Play" Is Not a Four-Letter Word

"He's just playing."

"Quit that playing. Do something productive."

"Be serious. Stop playing."

Maybe you've heard phrases like these in adult interactions. Maybe even in connection with preschoolers and children.

Kids are born to play. Play is their job, their occupation.

If that's so, why are so many adults trying to do something else with them?

In this chapter, Rae Pica looks at the push for achievement and accomplishment at the expense of play. "Got to get those kids ready for the real world." But isn't the real world all about problem-solving and exploring solutions? Isn't it about thinking and assessing and doing? All of those things are related to play, especially for younger children.

Rae writes regarding play: "Among the social skills learned are the ability to share, cooperate, negotiate, compromise, make and revise rules, and to take the perspectives of others." Play also helps develop problem-solving, helps kids deal with stress and cope with fears, and develop literacy, math, and creative skills. And much more.

In schools today, adults often tell kids how to use materials or what exactly to do. Too often in my church classroom, a kindergartner will walk up and ask: "What do we do here?" My current response to this: "Look at the materials. What do you think you could do?"

I set up situations and materials in my classroom to suggest ways kids may play, work, and interact. But they should explore and experiment on their own. Recently I set up chairs and a steering wheel as a car. Kids began to drive to various locations and negotiate where to sit. The vehicle needed to be expanded, so we added a couple of chairs. Eventually our vehicle was a large van or bus, allowing seven kids to riding and play at the same time. (The doll made an eighth passenger.) 

Kids played out various roles. They used conversation skills. They challenged preconceived ideas. ("A girl is driving?") They discussed any minor conflicts that arose...and involved me when they felt it may be needed. ("Mr. Scott, they are making the baby pee out of the window.")

Play is so important. True play, not directed or orchestrated by adults, is the way that children truly work out their understandings about the world. 

And, as Rae says: "I shouldn't have to defend play for children any more than I should have to defend their eating, sleeping, and breathing."

Some links from the book---

• The Decline of Play (TEDx Talk)
• The Critical Need for Fantasy Play
• Why Children Need Different Types of Play
• American Association for the Child's Right to Play

And a few more---

• Creativity = Time + Permission
• Not Literacy?
• "They Seem Baffled"
• Why Play Pretend When We're Trying to Build Readers?

Ball and Tunnel Game

This summer I taught in our church's Vacation Bible School, a week of mornings full of fun and learning. The leader of our 4-year-old class made this great game.

The kids really liked it - and I did, too. I now have it in my church classroom.

It's easy to make and repurposes items (my favorite thing!).

You need a wide gift wrap tube, wide clear packing tape, and a deep container. The container he used it a plastic bin. But you could use a deep box or other container.

Cut the tube into short lengths. Tape the pieces in various places around the bin. Leave plenty of space between the tube pieces. Use a roll of tape under the tube to attach it to the bin. Then use a long piece of tape over the tube and onto the bin on both sides. The tube pieces should be secure. Place only 2-3 pieces in the bin.

Add a couple of table tennis balls to play the game. The original idea was for two kids to stand on either end of the bin and tilt it around to make the balls roll through the tubes--working together. However, our fours enjoyed playing the game independently. Some even enjoyed placing the bin on the floor and rolling the balls around with their hands.

You could add other balls or obstacles to the game to make it more challenging or interesting.

A fun diverse game for not much investment. My kind of resource!

Free Range Sand Play

Do you ever wonder what others think about you? Sometimes I do. And sometimes I worry that they think I'm crazy. Recently we did a "crazy" thing.

Usually when we have sand play, it looks like this.

A bin of sand with tools. Several kids play together with the sand in the same space.

But a few weeks ago, we did "free range sand play." Well, not exactly free range. But we did liberate the sand from its singular container. We put it on trays with tools available. (We did this once before.)

Kids played in more individual ways than cooperatively.

They did talk with one another. They did watch one another. They did experiment in some of the same ways, building on one another's ideas.

But I noticed that kids took different chances and explored their own ideas. They had space to experiment and try things, without having to worry about how their exploration impacted others.

The "mess" that resulted was not any more than it usually is in sand play. In fact, I think there was less sand on our drop cloth since several kids were not "wrestling" for space in the one container.

And, as I remember it, I had to do less guiding talk, reminding kids to keep sand over the container and helping referee play issues.

I think other teachers who saw this may have had a slight skip in their heartbeats. I wonder if they think I'm crazy to do this kind of stuff.

And maybe I am.

But a little crazy and a little danger can open up lots of learning possibilities.

(And I'm learning to care less about what others think, especially if it provides good learning experiences for kids.)

Teach the Students We Have

Are you teaching the kids you have? Or the kids you wish you had?

This always makes me think.

Creativity = Time + Permission

One of the things I enjoy about my church kindergarten class is the more relaxed expectations and the more open atmosphere. In a school classroom, we must be much more focused on standards and curriculum and accomplishing what needs to be done. In my church classroom, we do have goals for each learning time, but everything is not driven by what must be done.

And I've discovered that in this environment, when kids have time to explore something and permission to veer off the "path," they become creative. They explore ideas. They try things that they may not have tried before.

We often wonder and think about what would happen if we tried a different approach. We do some things that fail. We adjust and try new things.

We observe what others are doing and try it ourselves. We explore and expand on our own ideas and on the ideas of others.

Permission says yes. Yes, try that. Yes, you can move this to the other table. Yes, we can pull that from the cabinet and add it to your activity.

But shouldn't this be what happens in every classroom? Should children have the time and the permission to explore and experiment. To discover and investigate? To fail and try again?

When I'm in a school classroom again, I'm going to look for ways to add time and permission. I want to encourage each student to create understanding by exploring and playing.

Often we hear that kids need to be reading this or "mathing" that. But making learning real - encouraging kids to use different ways to gain understanding - that's the goal of education.

I want to find more ways to give time. I want to look for new ways to give permission. I want the room to be filled with problem-solving.

That's when the real learning happens.

Kids' Preferred Mode of Learning

This summer I'm reading and commenting on the book What If Everybody Understood Child Development? by Rae Pica.

Chapter 12: In Defense of Active Learning

For a while, I worked in a publishing company with a lot of other folks. Periodically our company would upgrade software or systems. A lot of people would need to know about the new system and how to use it. So the company would schedule training sessions.

Often these sessions consisted of a large group of people sitting in a room watching someone talk about the features and how to do it while clicking things on screen. While this may be a way to disseminate information to a lot of people in an efficient way, it was not an effective way for me to learn what to do with the new system. The best way for me to know what to do and how to do it was to play with the system on my computer. Working my way through examples and trying new things.

Rae Pica talks about these two types of learning in this chapter. Explicit learning (hearing something) and implicit learning (doing something) are both used in classrooms today. However, there is a lot less doing, active learning, than in the past. But discovery and exploration yield more lasting and mor meaningful learning than hearing or reading information. Rae reminds us that movement is the young child's preferred mode of learning and we should use that preference as a way to teach. That is most effective.

One example she gives: a preschool teacher conducted a mock lesson on kiwi fruit with parents. Half of the parents were told about kiwis and given an coloring sheet with brown and green crayons. The other half took a field trip to the hallway and explored a tree with kiwi; they could explore the fruit with their senses. The latter group left with greater understanding of kiwis. Experience and exploration gave much more meaning than listening.

I had a similar experience when I moved to Tennessee. My first fall season, I saw trees begin to change to vibrant reds and yellows and oranges. I had learned about fall when I was a kid. I had seen pictures of colorful trees. I had seen people in movies walk along colorful avenues in autumn. But my home in Texas did not have this type of fall. So I "knew" about fall as a season but that was it. In Tennessee I experienced it. That first year, my wife and I drove around the town, looking for different colored trees. We compared how they looked. We gathered a few leaves and pressed them in books to save. I really knew about fall leaves when I experienced and explored it.

How can we give learning opportunities to kids? How can we actively involve them in whatever we are teaching? How can we use their preferred mode of learning--movement--to make those learning connections?

Rae has challenged me to look for ways to make all kinds of learning experiential and active. And maybe to start dreaming again.

Some links from the book---

• Identifying and Nurturing the Intelligence of Movement
• Making Stories Come Alive
• Bringing the Body to Digital Learning

And a few more---

• Problem Solving in Action
• Authentic Experiences Encourage Learning
• Some Teaching Advice from My Five-Year-Old

Office Supply Teaching Resources

One of my favorite places to find materials (and repurpose them) is the office supply store or office supply area of a discount store. I love visiting those places, especially at this time of year (when they put out all those school supplies!).

Here are some ideas for using office supplies in your classroom--

Use binder clips to make game pieces for a gameboard. Clip something in the binder clip. Use postcards or small pictures. Use your kids' photographs. Draw pictures or print names on heavy paper and cut out to use in the clips. Or attach different colored stickers to the binder clips (so you can tell them apart).  Check out other ideas for binder clips at Pre-K and K Sharing blog.

Scour the sticker aisle. We use stars, circle and rectangle stickers, and hole reinforcements as part of our sticker collection. My kids love to use lots of stickers. I get more stickers at a better price from the office supply store. And these stickers are simple and can be combined to create other types of designs.

Clipboards are great for portable writing. We use them when we add writing to the blocks center. We use them when we use the tools or the doctor kit. They can be used when playing games with numbered cubes on the floor. Or clip pictures, photos, or artwork to them and hang them on the wall.

Highlighter markers give a different type of drawing experience. When we draw with them, we can still see through them. We draw on maps or forms or pages of words. Sometimes we draw with them on plain paper. But they are a great addition to our writing materials.

Other office supplies we like to use:

• Staplers
• Gel pens (or any kind of pens)
• Dry erase markers
• Rubber bands (especially with our geoboards)
• Lined notepads
• Sticky notes

What kinds of office supplies do you use for teaching?

Fred Rogers Was Right

Yesterday I posted a quote by Fred Rogers that play is serious learning. I checked through my photos from the past month. Just look at all the serious learning going on.

Caring, responsibility, helpfulness

Cooperation, color theory, self-expression, shapes

Gravity, balance

Problem-solving, force, weight

Communication, writing, literacy

Self-expression, creativity, composition, recycling

Quantity, number sense, patterning, satisfaction

Symmetry, shape, balance, problem-solving

Color theory, states of matter, motion

Symbolism, fine-motor development, creativity, sorting

Cooperation, taking turns, letter recognition, comparison

Creativity, symbolism, self-confidence, thinking skills

Play Is Serious Learning

Never underestimate the power of play with kids.

My Tribe

Saturday I was privileged to be one of the workshop leaders at the Tennessee Weekday Early Education Conference. I was able to meet and talk with a lot of wonderful preschool teachers. It was the first workshop-leading experience I've had in a while. I was reminded why I enjoy doing it. (I was also bone tired at the end of the day.)

I talked with some friends that I haven't seen in a while. I talked with a lot of new friends, too. I spoke a lot of words, many more than I usually do in a whole week. That's the difference in working at home and working in a location - seeing and talking to people.

As I reflect on the day, I realize that those people are my tribe. I belong with a group like that. Well, I kind of stick out. I only saw a few guys (and those were leaders or vendors). But I fit in with them. They understand what I'm talking about more than other groups.

Here's what I'm thinking about all those wonderful preschool teachers I met and saw this weekend.

Preschool* teachers want to do a good job. The teachers had questions. They came with concerns or needs that they wanted help with. They were looking for new ideas or different ones that could work in their classrooms. No matter what the experience level, all the teachers wanted to do the best they could for the kids they teach. All wanted to learn more so they could be more effective.

Preschool teachers enjoy themselves. If they were doing a brain break, talking in small groups, or just conversing in the halls, they were laughing and enjoying the experience together. They enjoyed hearing (and telling) stories about kids. They excitedly thumbed through a new resource or browsed displayed materials. They enjoyed being together. Sometimes teaching can be a little lonely (when you're the only "big person" in the room). Gathering together and having a good time helps teachers recharge. And these teachers were ready for some fun.

Preschool teachers are helpful. More than once, teachers would go through my conference space and pick up trash that had been left. At the end of the day, two ladies came into my room. "We're just making sure everything is picked up," they said. They made sure trash was put away - so I didn't have to do that job after I packed up. Or someone else had to do it when resetting the room.

Preschool teachers are grateful. I heard "Thank you" more times than I could count. And they meant it.

Preschool teachers like chocolate. They were excited when I told them it was available in my room. They ate almost all I had (like I told them to do). There were only a few pieces left, just enough for Cindy and me to enjoy (and not overindulge).

Preschool teachers love kids. When I heard a question or statement, I heard the care behind the voice. I heard "I want to meet this child's needs" behind every concern. And these ladies spent a Saturday wanting to learn more about loving and teaching those kids.

I've always been happy to be an early childhood teacher, to be associated with such a group. After this weekend, I can continue to say I'm glad I'm a part of this tribe of caring adults who love children.

*While I'm blogging about preschool teachers, I think this list is appropriate for teachers of any age group.

If the Bum Is Numb

This summer I'm reading and commenting on the book What If Everybody Understood Child Development? by Rae Pica.

Chapter 10: The Myth of the Brain/Body Dichotomy
Chapter 11: Why Does Sitting Still Equal Learning?

How do you feel when you sit all day? Maybe you're in a meeting or a conference or just at home. Sitting all day can make you really tired. And yet, as Rae Pica says, we expect kids to do it all day while they are learning.

We've bought into the assumption that the body and the brain are separate entities. We want to teach the brain and ignore the body. We limit recess or PE or other times when the body is fully engaged. We equal sitting and listening to learning. Or at least to effective teaching.

Rae quotes teacher Dee Kalman: "When the bum is numb, the mind is dumb."

The brain is more active when the body is moving. Blood is flowing and chemicals for long-term memory and focus increase. Sitting for more than short periods of time (more than 10 minutes) causes us to begin to lose focus and awareness. 10 minutes!

Dance break!

I've seen it in the classroom. When I taught first graders, we had to have stand up breaks, movement breaks, and even dance breaks. We would move for a short while and then get back to other things. One of our favorite games was Move, Freeze, Add! In my second grade class, we would have "roving practice." Kids would move to a place in the room and spell a word (or solve math equation). Then they would move to a new place to write down their word or math solution. We did this for several minutes. In both classes, I would often tell them to find a partner and we would work together while standing up. Sometimes we would switch partners often.

The younger the kids or the more challenging the thinking, the more need there is to incorporate learning.

Think about easy ways to add movement. At the very least, incorporate brain breaks at regular intervals. Make sure they move across the midline (right hand moving to left side and vice versa). This wakes up the brain.

Keep on moving!

Some links from the book--

• Understanding the Child's Mind/Body Connection
• Can Exercise Close the Achievement Gap?
• Moving with the Brain in Mind
• Teaching Children Who Just Won't Sit Still

And a few more--

• Learning on the Move
• Let's Move
• Math and Movement

Coffee Filters Three Ways

I love coffee filters. First, I love using coffee filters to make coffee. But that's not the purpose of this post. I love using coffee filters for other things. Because they are so lightweight, they are perfect for some art explorations that just wouldn't work as well with regular paper.

Here are three ways we've used coffee filters to explore and create.

Coffee filters are perfect for making snowflakes. Or cutting designs in general.

They are easier to cut since they are so thin. And that thinness makes them easier to cut when folded a couple of times.

Coffee filters absorb water. Water also flows through them easily. So we drew on coffee filters with washable markers. Then we painted water over the drawings.

The colors run and bleed together to make interesting designs. Here we were exploring fiery designs.

Since water flows easily in the coffee filters, we discovered that liquid watercolor paint does, too.

We used pipettes to draw up watercolors and dispense them onto the filters. Sometimes we saturated the filters and caused "overload"!

Coffee filters make a great addition to our art supply. We've even used them to make angel wings.

What have you used them for?

Blocks and Paper Strips

We love playing with blocks in my classroom. We build and use them for all kinds of things. We look for different ways to use the blocks and for different items to put in the blocks center.

There are lots of accessories out there for your blocks center. Some of them are very cool and very fun...and very expensive.

But we had a fun experience recently with an accessory that isn't very costly--paper strips.

We had some blue paper cut into wavy "water" strips. We've used them before. Just look at the fun things that happened with these strips and blocks.

Double waterfall (after we had a single waterfall)

Raging river

Moat

Castle with moat

My kids are always creative with the blocks. But I was really impressed with the ideas they generated with the blocks and these strips.

Here are some posts about stuff for the blocks center:

• Favorite Things in the Blocks Center
• Unusual Things in the Blocks Center
• Wood Odds and Ends in the Blocks Center
• Kitchen Items in the Blocks Center

What fun things have you put in your blocks center?