Kids Play

Every day, we have a half hour called Project Time. Students pick from two breakout rooms and work on the projects of their choice while having some time for informal socializing. We've had building, paperwork, exercise, the “fix-it” room, the stuffie play room, and more.

I started to notice that even more than the task, students were craving different amounts of socialization. Some kids wanted to play with people in their own house but stay on screen, while others really wanted to talk to their classmates. We decided to try two free play rooms: talking and no talking.

The talking room turned into “kids play” with a full reenactment of school. They assigned themselves roles as different teachers and went through a day switching roles of teacher and student, moving through all of our schedule.

It can be nerve-wracking to see a group of kids holding up a mirror to your daily practice, but from my vantage point with my screen and sound turned off, here were some things that I heard:

For makertime today, we will building a tower. You can use any materials you want.

We’re about to transition into storytelling. I’ll sing a song while you get paper, a pencil and crayons. If you’re ready early, you can start dancing!

If you want to write a tricky word, stretch it out so you can hear all the sounds!

What do you see? How do you know?

I was blown away. I firmly believe that how we teach is as important as what we teach, and to see my students taking complete ownership of their transitions, open ended questions, strategies, and critical thinking was beyond my wildest dreams. Their play was making clear to me that our safe and predictable learning environment was supporting them in their play and their imaginations.