meaningful, creative, and fun learning and education
PLAY
H a n d -i n - H . 1 0 a
016 Making
Time and Space for Free Play in Early Childhood
Allie Bishop Pasquier 024Thinking
Creatively through Construction
Samantha Song 027 Big
Letter Hunt
Rute Nieto Ferreira 038 Food
for Thought
ng i n
D . 2
f o r Le n g i s e a
r
Laura Tsang
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meaningful, fun, and creative learning and education
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Table of Contents
Can Learning be Playful in 6th Grade like Kindergarten?
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Claire Huang 066 Crayons,
Cardboard, and Virtual Reality
Derek Ham
Compositional Tinkering in the Music Room
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m
V u nity oices
Travis T. Fuchs
Playing and Learning through Rhythm and Song in Ghana
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Yaba Haffar
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Co
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Play for Creative Learning: Interview with Mitch Resnick
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Rufina Park 98 Playful
Learning in FInnish Classrooms
Piia Martikainen and Susanna Hietaharju
044 When
Children and Adults Work Together on Playgrounds
Johan, Marcus, and Freja 048 Designing
Undetermined Places for Play
Tamotsu Ito, Evelyn Pei Qi Ooi Widjaja, Rufina Park 056 My
Favorite Way to Play
Kids from Japan, Canada, New Zealand, and the US
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Learning By Tinkering
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meaningful, fun, and creative learning and education
It’s wobbly, but it works! Our first scribbling machine!
words and photo Nitasha Manchanda illustrations Rufina K. Park
“As parents and educators, we can support our learners better if we acknowledge tinkering as a distinct (non-inferior) mode of learning”
Are you a tinkerer? Tinkering, to most people, implies ‘messing about’ or playing with something: taking physical things apart, or making them, and not always with a set goal in mind. I don’t consider myself a tinkerer, but becoming a parent in an innovation hub such as Boston has made me take a closer look at creative ways of learning (particularly in light of my own traditional schooling in India). While growing up, I watched my brother (six years my senior and a master tinkerer) constantly engage in what we now recognize as ‘hands-on learning’, in stark contrast to the rote memorization rewarded at our school. His preferred form of play involved taking perfectly functional household gadgets apart to find out how they worked. To the shock of my parents and extended family, the reassembled gadgets always worked as well (or better) than before. In one
notorious instance of ‘improvement’, he fiddled with a speaker system installed throughout the house until it could also act as a microphone, allowing him to listen in on all rooms secretly. His ten-yearold self wasn’t appreciated as the ‘gifted and talented’ child he clearly was until much later. But not everyone is interested in playing with gadgets, or mechanically inclined from an early age. I certainly wasn’t. I just didn’t have the same passion for gadgets that my brother did, and even less interest in opening them up. I gravitated to books for my leisure and learning, which made me a great fit for traditional schools and also later for graduate school in molecular biology. My brother’s childhood obsession with stereos and TVs, combined with his love of music, eventually led him to a successful career as a sound engineer and entrepreneur. He now runs a music production company while training the next generation
of sound engineers at a training institute he founded. Looking back, his tinkering habits make sense in the context of his generally risk-taking (fearless), curious nature, coupled with his indifference to other people’s opinions. My ‘good girl’ habits included pleasing teachers and parents with great grades and staying out of trouble!
Why we should all try tinkering So tinkering is not for everyone, right? As a more abstract learner myself, I couldn’t agree more. But I do think there is a huge value in exposing all children to hands-on tinkering (particularly girls, who are less frequently drawn to gadgets). Even an abstract learner, like myself, can benefit from the mindset shift that tinkering can bring—becoming more comfortable with risk-taking, hands-on action-led exploration can help us be more flexible, creative and, ultimately, innovative.
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I like learning ukulele. I love making hearts Keira Japan
Wheneve r it joyful and ’s art time I feel it’s subject. I my favourite love to d o it a school an d at hom t e Forrest New Zeala nd
I like to p lay
on bicycle s
Kako Japan
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meaningful, fun, and creative learning and education
I catch the flowers Su-Lina Japan
e playground I love to play in th ics. and do gymnast of me doing This is a picture flips Lila United States
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Play for Creative Learning: Interview with Mitch Resnick interview Rufina K. Park photos MIT Media Lab illustrations Emily Hong
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meaningful, fun, and creative learning and education
Mitch Resnick is the Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab and the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research. His research group created Scratch, a visual coding platform and online community for children with over 20 million users and is translated into 70+ languages. He is a leading practitioner and thinker in the space of creative learning and constructivist pedagogical approaches in learning technologies. In the following interview, I asked him about his thoughts on creativity, play, and his career trajectory.
Rufina: Could you give a brief overview of your ideas on creative learning? Mitch: We live in a world that is changing more rapidly than ever before and today’s children will enter a never-ending stream of unpredictable situations in their lives ahead of them. To be able to thrive in a fast-changing world, the ability to think and act creatively will become more important than ever before. At the Lifelong Kindergarten group, we develop new tools, activities, and strategies to help young people to develop as creative thinkers. A big part of this work is giving children the opportunity to create things--create is at the root of creative thinking. As people create things, there is a constant back and forth between the processes of creating things, developing new ideas, and growing as a creative thinker.
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the creative properties of Lego begin to diminish. Instead, if we allow children the flexibility to play on their own terms, they have the opportunity to experiment and mess about with the creative process. This is the small difference between offering a Lego kit with directions, or a bowl of Legos, ready for imagination. When children think there is only one way to use a material, they are unlikely to think critically or creatively about the object. Our lives are filled with messages about right and wrong, when most of the time, we need to use our critical thinking and live in that grey area in the middle. When children have the opportunity to engage in open-ended play on their own terms, they find problems to solve and persevere through them. Play is our very best tool for making meaning of the world. When you offer children toys and objects for play, think about their flexibility: do they allow children to make meaning? Are you, the adult, willing to be flexible with children’s creative approach to objects? If we are willing to allow children to design their own Lego world, we are on track to let children take the lead with their play, supporting their creative development.
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meaningful, fun, and creative learning and education
Curating Materials The materials we offer children have been a focus of Early Childhood Curriculum since Friedrich Fröbel, the father of Kindergarten, created objects for play in 1837. The objects, which he called “gifts”, were mainly wooden shapes for building. Maria Montessori was inspired by Froebel’s gifts when she created her own materials for teaching in 1907. In the early 1900s, Caroline Pratt created the first unit blocks for her classroom in New York City. Materials have changed and evolved over the years, but simple objects are still engaging for children. In 1972, the Architect Simon Nicholson articulated this idea with his “Theory of Loose Parts”, offering that exploring materials allows us to engage with creative thinking, and creativity should not be reserved just for people who do “creative” jobs. Nicholson’s theory addressed child’s play and the importance of children engaging with creative and open-ended play. In recent years, the term “loose parts” has permeated Early Childhood Curriculum, being used to describe the objects that adults offer children for play.
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When Children and Adults Work Together on Playgrounds words and photos Johan, Marcus and Freja translation Nanna Rasmussen coordination Morten Møller
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meaningful, fun, and creative learning and education
We are Grade 7 students who are Youth Reporters of the Capital of Children in Denmark. We interviewed designers at the Design School Kolding and the playground manufacturer Ledon A/S and asked them questions about how children are involved in the playground making process. We also tested Ledon’s new 2018 playground series even though it was a top secret! We think that the complete playground set is a bit expensive, but the three of us would still highly recommend it. When we arrived at the playground, we saw a large, beautiful, and the most wonderful playground. It had the shape of a castle with flags at the top and also swings. The towers were grey like a spaceship, and there were also other colors used such as yellow, brown, black, white, and red. The material was nice to touch, and fun to walk on. Suspensions bridges connected the towers, and there was this thing that looked like something in between a canon and a telescope, which we thought was very cool.
There were many things to try on the playground. On one of the towers, there was a sword that we could play a spinning game with and make the sword point to four different pictures of a snake, a rat, a dragon and a bat. We used a wheel to turn the sword. Another thing we found cool was a handle that we could push to make a large yellow key go back and forth. Before going to the playground, we had seen parts of the model inside the company’s factory, but seeing it in real life was one-hundred times better! After visiting the playground, we interviewed people at Ledon and Design School Kolding. We learned a lot about the collaboration between children and adults, and we got better at interviewing and asking questions. We also discovered how playgrounds are made at Ledon, and we found out what they do at Design School Kolding. We also learned that in many ways, it is great to involve children and that adults can play at a playground.
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Compositional Tinkering Activity
The goal of the activity is to allow students to explore composition in a more experimental and fluid manner while highlighting the tinkering process.
The Basic Process After tinkering with composition, perform!
* The leader will introduce a well-known song chosen by members of the group. For my time in Rock Choir, these included: Young Volcanoes by Fallout Boy, Renegades by X Ambassadors, I Will Wait by Mumford and Sons, and Change of Seasons by Sweet Thing. The point is to have a fun and popular song the students want to sing. * The main melody of the song is played/sung with students while other members on instruments learn the chord progression of the song. Relating to tinkering, the singing and playing of the piece is immediate feedback and depending on how it sounds promotes modification. * As the song solidifies through practice, a harmony line or solo section is proposed by the leader or a student. * As the new musical line is incorporated into the song, students are actively encouraged to switch from the main melody to a harmony or make up their own depending on comfort level. This promotes open exploration. * This process continues, and more and more harmonies or solo sections or tempo changes, etc. are added. Remember, this is promoting open exploration. * Once the song has taken on a new shape, and members are happy with it, the new version is notated by the students for sharing, replaying, and to iterate with for the next session.
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meaningful, fun, and creative learning and education
Acknowledgment I am indebted to the founder and current director of the Rock Choir at Lakefield College School where I began to think about this topic. Thank you to Geoff Bemrose for his guidance, voice, guitar skills, and opportunity to rock. Special thank you also to Rachel Bemrose and Pam Birrell for their constant support in all things musical while I was teaching at Lakefield College School.
Extensions * Have a student lead the initial melody learning experience as they become more comfortable with the process. * Have the new work performed (at an assembly, meeting, impromptu concert, etc.). This gives the work meaning and allows sharing with friends and families. * Invite local artists and community members to a session to enrich the tinkering process both musically and culturally. * Compose a novel piece of music with the group taking some of the favorite elements of past pieces.
The 2017/18 Lakefield College School Rock Choir before a performance and during rehearsal. Some students are missing. Photo by Geoff Bemrose. www.ottiya.com
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