How Do I Love Thee: Final Project

Module 8: Synthesizing

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Do you think your child plays "too" much at school? Learn how playing in your child's classroom sparks the creative child within. skultecep818.blogspot.com/ 

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Understanding the importance of teaching children through play can be difficult for some parents to grasp. However, what they don't realize is the damage and affect standardizing testing has on young children in kindergarten. Today, teachers feel that their students are loosing their ability and freedom to be creative. Teachers are also loosing their creativity when it comes to planning and implementing lessons because they are required to teach to the test. Leaving students overworked, tired, stressed, and bored with school as early as kindergarten.

Incorporating play into your classrooms will not only help stimulate your students brains, but it will help develop each developmental aspects of a child: cognitive, aesthetic, physical, social, emotional, language, and affective. By using these seven tools: perceiving, patterning, abstracting, embodied thinking, modeling & dimensional thinking, and playing we can mold and shape creative young children through play.  

Modeling & Dimensional Thinking:

Modeling for instance helps us understand the world around us by abstracting a topic and also intertwining dimensional thinking to zoom in and out of topics, ideas, or objects. Modeling helps makes things more accessible that might be difficult to experience and understand. Now let's zoom into the topic play.

As we zoom in we face, the human body of a child. Each child who enters our classroom enters with different developmental levels. Some children may have more social/emotional development than others and some may have less language development than others. Each child is different. However, as a teacher we plan lessons and activities that cover all developmental aspects of a child. The image below shows some of the domains and what parts of a child's body is developing through each domain. 

After looking at the image above some of you might be still wondering, how does play really help students learn, be creative, and develop their young minds? Below is an image of two parents thinking that all the children are doing in this classroom is, “playing”. Well, they are right, but little do they know that in each of the activities the children are engaged in are actually improving some aspect of the child's development (social, emotional, etc.)  

Each child in the image above helps explain to these parents how their activity is helping their whole body develop. For instance, the little girl jump roping is developing her gross motor skills. Whereas, the child on the floor is developing number concepts with the blocks he is playing with. Even though children might just think they are, “playing”, we as adults know that the activities they are choosing are helping them in more ways than one. Instead of putting our students in classrooms where they are told what to do every minute we can let them learn through trial and error. They can figure out what is right, wrong, and what their bodies and minds can actually do. They can be creative and be the individuals they want to be.  

Perceiving:
To perceive something is to use our five sense to really dig deeper and look beyond what is right in front of us and see a whole new perspective/meaning to that “something”. Let's take the word play and dig deeper and think about, what exactly is play? Some of us may think of play as children running around, children playing with toys, or children playing on playgrounds, but it is more than that. To help people see that there are many different types of play we have to think outside of the box. For example, play can be playing an instrument, computer games, sports, pretend play, play dough, a play or skit, etc.

Within the classroom children explore play using their five senses. Through sensory play children explore paint or shaving cream. Young children smell new objects and things that might be less familiar to them. Children also see and manipulate objects in their own creative ways. In pretend play children take on many different roles and act out skits or plays that they have created themselves. As we take a deeper look at play we can see that play isn't just about children running around. In fact we can incorporate all these different types of play into the classroom and help children discover new ways to play that they may be less familiar with.  

Patterning:

Let's take a closer look at the cognitive domain in a child's development. During free choice or “play time”, children can make choices on which activities they choose to explore. Throughout the year the children explore different themes. For this example, the children are learning about transportation. I have placed different pictures of transportation that the children see in China in a little basket. I have placed this basket in the “math area”. However, I am not informing the children that in this area it is called the “math area” and today you will make patterns. I allow the children to explore the materials on their own. Through their own exploration the children might create simple patterns. For example, they might create a pattern like this: bike, car, bike, car, bike, car, which is called a two-part pattern. This is the very first step to developing patterns for young children. Later, the children might begin to create three, four, or even five part patterns. Although the children are playing the teachers can create many different centers throughout the classroom. Some of these centers might include: math center, science center, construction, art area, pretend play, etc. Within each center are specific activities chosen to help develop each domain.

Let's look at patterning in a more complex way. We are going to use dice. For this example I will be using dice from the game Tenzi. Tenzi comes with four sets of dice. Each set is a different color and contains ten dice. We are going to use the dice to create multiple patterns and break down the dice. A child might arrange the dice by the same number (such as all fours), arrange them in order (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), or arrange them by color. There are endless possibilities. Children can use something as simple as dice and form many complex patterns. Through play they are exploring and discovering patterns in ways they may have not discovered yet.

The cognitive tool of patterning is to create and manipulate objects by taking them to the next step of their original state. My first example was of students using basic materials in the classroom to make patterns. For example, using toys, pattern blocks, snacks, and manipulatives. With my second example I was able to take one specific group of materials (dice) and show multiple different ways that they can be manipulated into different patterns.

Patterning shows parents that learning through play is fun! The children don't have to sit through lectures, or hours of large group sessions. They get to discover on their own what the world has to offer. They also get to pick and choose how they use the materials in the classroom to be creative. 

Abstracting: 

Abstracting is taking a look at a topic, concept, object, or idea and digging deeper to break them down and taking a closer look at these broken down portions. Helping us to see that even when we break them down they still represent the same overall idea.

There are many ways to abstract play. However, the first one that came to my mind was pretend play. In Sparks of Genius, the author states in Chapter 8, “We should give children toys that they can use in many ways. Let them adapt blocks, simple dolls, paper cloth, and household items to as many scenarios as they can imagine. Encourage them to imagine a stick to be a sword, a scarf a river, a pair of alphabet blocks a pair of dice” (p. 156). When children play this is exactly what they do. They become creative with the materials around them. The pretend play area in the classroom is a perfect place to watch this happen. I place many items in the pretend play area. For example, cloth, sheets, rocks, containers, a box, menus, brushes, etc.

Let's take a look at a cardboard box. As an adult you might think of a cardboard box as something to store things in or to help you move. However, when children see a cardboard box they see an endless amount of ideas. A child might turn this box into a bus, a boat, a ship, a rocket, a submarine, a house, a shop, an airplane, etc. It's amazing to just sit back and watch children take objects we might think as household items or simply nothing at all and turn them into extraordinary things. The same goes for an object like a bed sheet. A child turns a bed sheet into a magic carpet, a veil, a blanket for a picnic, a blanket for a baby, a hood, a ghost, a tent, etc.

Play isn't just about playing with store brought toys. It is about being creative and turning objects into anything your imagination wishes. The next time you look at an object think about it in a child's perspective. How would they play with this object? There are also many children around the world that don't have store bought toys. Instead they use sticks, cardboard boxes, stones, sand, mud, etc. All of these materials can be used and transformed into all different types of play.  

Embodied Thinking:

Embodied thinking is using our bodies and thinking about where they are, what they are doing, and how it feels (the sensation of our muscles, skin, tension, and balance). In kindergarten children use their bodies all the time through play to think outside of the box. Their bodies help them learn new topics and understand concepts. Embodied thinking also helps English Language Learners understand new English terms that they might find difficult. Our students don't want to learn about new topics from their desks, watch videos, read about it, or write about it. Instead they want to get up and move their bodies.

One way I used embodied thinking with my students is when we were learning about molecular movement. The terms solid, liquid, and gas can be quite difficult for young children to understand. However, by using their bodies they can move like solids, liquids, and gases. Tell your students that they are an ice cube (a solid) in a pan. The children should then all huddle close and vibrate their bodies slightly. Then as you turn the burner on tell the children they are starting to melt and they are turning into a (liquid). The children should then spread farther apart and bump into each other. Then as the water is fully melted and beginning to boil they will begin to turn into a (gas) as they evaporate. The children should be much farther apart and may bounce off one another. Now when you ask the children a question, what happens when a molecule is a solid? Their brains will remember when they used embodied thinking and used their bodies to move like a molecules. Which will help them answer the question. 

Playing:

Play has emerged throughout each of the seven tools of creativity. Each tool provides explanation as to how children are learning through play. I provide different activities to try out and ways to structure the classroom to support play in each developmental domain. As a teacher the parents have been the hardest to convince and explain why play is important. I have created an activity to implement at the beginning of the school year with the parents to hopefully help change their minds!

In, Sparks of Genius (1999), the authors state, “playing has become so rare in our society that some people worry that the art of it will be lost” (p. 266). We rarely see or think about adults playing in their work environments. The reason for this is that, “the only difficulty with playing-and it's a big one-- is being able to remain enough of a child to do it” (Bernstein, 1999, p. 265). People like Fleming remained the child inside and “never grew up”. They were excited about their work and found it fun. Today, people are bored sitting in their office chairs all day. Sometimes everyone just needs a break to play!

This is something every teacher who is teaching kindergarten should try at the beginning of each school year with their parents. Open house would be a perfect time to try this activity. As the parents come into your classroom for open house have them sit down at the tables. Introduce yourself and talk to them as if this is the first day of school and they are your students. Then begin to explain the choices that they have during free choice and what is available at each center. After you have explained this tell the parents they are free to start free choice. Obviously, some parents might find this strange or they might be hesitant to begin. Encourage the parents to explore the classroom and choose an activity to play and engage with. After a few minutes some of the parents will be fully engaged in the activity they have chosen. You might find some parents creating a road out of blocks or trying to find out which blocks will help make a car go down a ramp faster. As the parents are engaged walk around the classroom and ask them open ended questions, “I can see that you have made a ramp. How far does the car go, and which blocks made the car go the farthest?” This will help the parents open their eyes and mind up to a child's perspective. Keep the parents engaged in free choice for about thirty minutes. Then ask them to clean up and find a seat at the tables again. Once the parents are back ask them a few questions. What did it feel like when I told you to start free choice? Did you enjoy the activity you chose? Did you feel as though you were learning through play? How so? Keep the conversation going and have this help stem the conversation of how play is important for young children in their everyday life. Let's try to keep our parents open to new ideas and different forms of play. We need to stimulate our parents brains as well as our students!

In order to help young children develop in each developmental domain we need to incorporate creative thinking tools into our planning. By doing this we will spark the creative child within each of our students. Let's set them free. We need more teachers saying, “yes” to play and “no” to standardized testing. Let our students become the architect, actor, mathematician, scientist, veterinarian, etc. that they want to be. We just have to let them be the creative individuals they are in a classroom that isn't tied down by rules and regulations.