“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”
-Fred Rogers
In our classroom, students engage in purposeful play. Purposeful play means that students are building their math, literacy, language and social skills while engaging in play with their peers that has been directed, in some way, by the teacher. This is because young children learn and make sense of the world around them in different ways than older children. By manipulating a variety of materials and engaging with their senses and their peers, they work through their different thoughts and feelings while building on academic skills.
Last week, we put this practice of purposeful play to good use.
First, students used our donated water bottles to make their own snowman friend.
Next, we read a story inspired by our community that used our kindergarten sight words "I", "see", "the", "a". When reading, we remembered how super readers look at the picture first, then look for words they know. If there is a word we don't know, we try to sound it.
Here is a list of the places we saw in our community:
After talking about the places in their community, students were asked to build a place in their community while working and playing with a peer in order to make a story for them and their snowman.
We also talked about how it is ok to play by ourselves and make our own stories while playing with our toys.
Lastly, we drew a picture and wrote some words in order to share our story with others.
Here are some of our stories:
During their time away from school, please try to find some time for boys and girls to play uninterrupted. Remember, playing is the work of young children! One idea, is to have your child play for 45 minutes and encourage them to build a story. When they are done, they can draw and label a picture of what their story was or they can even try to write a sentence such as, "I played....".
