A closer look at Play in an Innovate Learning Environment

We have the privilege of hosting Masters students from the University of Canterbury at Haeata Community Campus.  Last week they asked a very good question.

"I was wondering if the philosophy of play-based learning at Haeata focussed on free play or also more structured play?"

from "Learning, Playing and Interacting - Good practice in the Early Years Foundation Stage."

There is much debate around play and what constitutes play and whether children learn 
through play. Learning through play is the outworking of an Innovate Learning

Environment in Hikuawa (our learning hub at Haeata).  
It is developmentally appropriate and responsive to the Ākongas needs.

The above continuum explores the different ways Educators could interact with a child in play.
I like that it is honest, suggesting possibilities of different approaches by educators to play.
It defines possible learning pathways.  According to this continuum, research shows that children learn most effectively in the green-highlighted segments. That is not to say learning doesn't happen in the
outer regions. It suggests the importance of the relationship between teacher and student.

We at Haeata are on a journey. As a team, we continually reflect on our practice. We are in the early stages of creating the most effective environment for our Åkonga (learners) to learn in. The above diagram is proving to be a very helpful tool in achieving this.

At any one time, educators in Hikuawa can be doing the following;

1. Unstructured - Play without adult support noticing what is happening.  

Setting up the environment to support Ākongas needs.

Children learn through self-directed actions. Children are biologically designed to learn through play. 

2.  Child-initiated play - the teacher is supporting the child through coaching.

 Social, emotional, academic coaching. The incredible year's programme provides excellent tools to achieve this. Coaching during the play. The teacher follows the child's lead, reflects on what the child is doing and how they can extend or add next steps.  This is Vygotsky's ZPD in action.

3. Focused learning - During one 90 learning block we provide a range of workshops for
Åkonga to choose from. These workshops flow from the child-initiated play.
They may offer new ideas that children have experienced before.
During this time, we have visiting teachers such as a Kaiako

from our senior school, the local librarian, a teacher of music and a Kapahaka tutor.

A Kaiako (teacher) may take a group out to visit a local building site and notice what

is happening, this workshop comes from the children's interest in building.

One teacher may offer a specific art technique, another, a workshop about forces,

applying this to Beyblades. Still, another may enable the creation of an obstacle course.

4. Highly structured -  Our Phonics lessons are an example of this.
Everyone is in a group designed for their learning stage. Some of our phonics is very playful, but what defines
it as being structured is when the children have to come and participate. We all do phonics after lunch.
In an ideal world, the teaching of phonics would be integrated into the play, but for the time being at least,
this is the best way for us to deliver this skill.

Similarly, for Åkonga ready for a more focused approach, direct instruction, we provide a
specialized writing tutor from within our team. This time also includes some of our Puna Ako group
(those close to our heart), where we teach social and emotional skills explicitly, and
organize personal learning plans. These small groups form the hub of our relationships.
We meet twice a day.

As we continue to develop practice together, for a range of learners, this diagram provides a scaffold for us to understand how we work as a team and how we honestly learn through play.  For example, I am particularly skilled at using play without the adult support through child-initiated play.  I spend a lot of time educating here.  Others in our team focus on adult guided playful experiential learning.  They enjoy setting up workshops for children to join.    Collaboration works wonders as we all bring different ideas into the environment from what we have noticed the Åkonga play.  We move fluidly along the continuum, becoming increasingly skillful at knowing what level of support is needed at any one time.

The type of play that Åkonga joins in is totally up to them.  We trust our learners to make wise decisions.  We view them as capable and able.  Together we are building a culture where learning is irresistible.  It is presented as a banquet table of learning delights. 

 A diagram I created to summarize learning.

Writing developmentally

 As you may know, I teach 5 and 6-year-olds at Haeata Community Campus.  In New Zealand, Ākonga are expected to be ready to begin formal learning of writing at the age of 5.  However, I question that.  Obviously, some are ready. It is a continuum obviously.  The ones who are not ready, in my experience can struggle to achieve, feel defeated, and think they can not write. This affects their learner identity.  The risk is that they generalize this belief and think they can not learn at all.  My goal is not to teach all children the same thing, but to find each child's pathway and teach to that.  Play facilitates this to happen.

As you know, there are a lot of skills that go into learning to write.  

Physical skills.  Able to grasp the pencil.  Able to coordinate the fingers and hand to move in a certain way.  Ākonga (learners) need to be able to listen to different sounds.   Resources that I have helped develop my understanding in this area are PMP and Yolanda Sorryl Phonics programme.   Others I would love to have a look at are Casey Caterpillar ,  Smart: Mark Making and Writing, 0-7 year olds. The Bridge. (Thanks to Jess Holdaway for pointing me to this.)  You will have other great resources I am sure.  Plus just loads of experience.

Mathematical understanding.  Writing is a symbol.  It stands for something.  In the real world, a child picks up an object and it stays the same as they move around it.  Letters have a certain position on a page, they are two dimensional. As children move around letters, they look different, from different positions.  Children need to understand one to one correspondence.    

Thinking skills.  Able to hold an idea in their head for long enough to write it down.  Develop working memory.  Able to focus on a task which is actually very abstract. Play provides an opportunity to develop self-regulation because the children make up their own rules, and to stay in a game, or take part you have to stick to the agreed rules.  "When  involved in play, children's concentration and application to the task are much greater than in academically-directed activities contrived by the teacher."(Dolya, G, 2010, p.10)

Purposeful nature of writing.  We write to convey a message.  What is the learners understanding of writing?  Have they experienced the results of someone writing a message and getting what they wanted?  Have they seen writing in authentic context?  Why do you write?

Authentic contexts to write.  Waiting for turns.

If you watch children freely play, you will notice them practising the above skills.  And that is because as Peter Grey says children want to learn the cultural tools of their society.  Vygotsky believed "that true education is not the mere learning of specific knowledge and skills, it is the development of children's learning abilities that is their capacity to think clearly and creatively plan an implement their plans and communicate their understanding in a variety of ways.  He believed this could be done by providing them with a set of cultural tools for thinking and creating.  These tools are the symbolic systems we use to communicate and analyse reality.  They include signs, symbols, maps, plans, numbers, musical notation, charts, models, pictures and language," (Dolya, G, 2010, p.8). 

A collaborative 'join in if you like'  map.  One child came and got me to show me their part, using loads of oral language.

Children write freely around the place.

As we talk about solving a problem due to the lack of Beyblades, I write.

Play freely outdoor or inside.  Developing physical skills.  Simple bar set.

Zaiden writes a letter to ask for some bikes.  Authentic contexts for writing.

The issue for us teachers is not that play is stopping children from learning, but that we can not recognise what the learning is in the play.  If we did, we would be able to help them progress, by adding in vocabulary and scaffolding opportunities to extend themselves.  

"Young children play and give a running commentary on what is happening.  This is external monologuing. As time goes on, the external monologue is internalised as thought.  When dealing with challenging situations children and adults often find themselves externalise their thoughts thinking aloud.  The speech structures become basic structures of their thinking. This means the development of thought is to a great extent determined by the linguistic ability of the child.  This, in turn, is dependent on the child's socio-cultural experience.  So one of the most important functions of education is to facilitate the development of rich, effective spoken language (Dolya, G, 2010,p9).

As educators of young children, one of our main roles is to support the learning of oral language.  Vygotsky himself says that play is one of the best ways for children to learn oral language.  When I first began learning through play, I didn't know what to look out for.  I had to go back to go forward.  I needed help to learn the what of children's learning and roughly in what order.  This is not linked to age but stage.  Obviously, some children will jump certain things, some learn in their own order, others will need specific support around certain stages. 

I have found using the developmental writing stages has helped me to notice how children learn to write.  As a Primary teacher in New Zealand, it has been important to back the bus up and allow learners to develop important skills at their own pace.   If I don't I am robbing them of learning that provides strong foundations.   We now know earlier is not better.

Here is an example of the one developmental chart  If you google developmental writing, there are others.  

My ultimate goal is to know this learning so well, I can notice it in play, know what comes next and help scaffold the next steps if needed.  

Above all, I want to protect children's learner identity.  No one deserves to think they can not learn as a child.  My son Josiah, has struggled to read and write all his life.  He is now 18 years old.  When he was at school, the most important thing to me was to protect his love of learning.  Being able to read and write is helpful, but not at the cost of learning.  Being able to learn is far more powerful.  Humans all over the world, work out how to learn in many different ways.  Now Josiah can read okay.  He still struggles with physical writing, but guess what, he has a computer.  I remember visiting a Psychiatrist once.  He told me he hardly ever wrote.  He just spoke his words onto a recorder and someone else typed them up.  

And as Nathan Mikaere-Wallis says "There’s no rush to learn to write, and it shouldn’t be formally taught until the age of seven."

Over the last month, I have been collating, writing lists and working out what the foundation skills of writing are.  Here is my most up to date list.  At Haeata Community Campus, we use Individual Learning Plans (ILP) for each Ākonga (learner).  These are loaded onto a database (Link Ed) and we can click on to the goals that are most appropriate.  I have been developing the pre-level 1 of New Zealand Curriculum.  Have a look and see what you think.  I would love your feedback.  Maybe you have already done this.  Wonderful.  Creating this continuum has been really useful for my own understanding.  It will be fascinating to start to apply it to our learners.

Foundation Skills - Writing

I can use my hands and movement to communicate.

I can understand when someone speaks to me.  

I join in a conversation

I can use what I hear in my own way.

I love listening to stories.  

I can retell a story

I can tell my own story.

I can talk about what is happening now, yesterday and tomorrow.

I can tell you about something that happened to me.

I can recognise print symbols in my own world and culture. 

I use print symbols and concepts with enjoyment, meaning and purpose.

I enjoy listening to rhyme.

I can use rhyme on my own.

I can say a simple alliteration phrase.

I can use many different words to express myself.

I can use nouns, verbs, adjectives orally.

I can use the prepositions on, up, over, through, inbetween, in, to describe what I am doing.

Phonics Stage 1 Yolanda Sorryl

General sound discrimination

Speech Sound discrimination

Alliteration

Rhythm

Sound breaks

Rhyme.

I can take part in imaginative play by myself

I can take part in imaginative play with others

I can use my imagination to visualize something.

I can use my imagination to tell a story.

Writing developmental stages 

I can draw a picture

I can scribble something that means something to me

My scribble writing is real writing to me.  It is written in a line.

I can write letters

I can write letters in a row.

I can read what I write.  

I can write letters from left to right and top to bottom.

I can write letters meaningfully into words.  

The words have spaces.

I can copy words found in my environment.

My eyes can track smoothly across the midline and follow movement without moving my head.

Both eyes move at the same time working as one.

My eyes and hands work together as one.

I can tell the difference and the similarities between two or more objects.

I can describe colour, size, shape, position, distance, direction, and orientation of an object.

I can make a pattern, sequence and order.

I can make a whole into parts and parts into a whole.

I can hop

I can skip

I can jump with two feet together

I can balance on one leg 

I can copy actions involving crossing my midline

I can cut and paste shapes

I can colour simple pictures.

I can pick up small objects using a tong or twizzers.

I can unscrew a lid on a bottle and screw it back up.

Level 1B    (NZC curriculum Haeata Verson).

Draw a picture

Talk about the picture

Write a sentence about the picture

Start in the right place

Put a full stop at the end

Leave spaces between words

Write the first sound.

Write the last sound.

Level 1A

Write on the topic

Keep writing interesting so the reader enjoys it.

Plan writing e.g. pictures, simple mind map.

Order ideas

Use different joining words (because, and, but, so, if) to join two ideas in one sentence.

Start sentences with capital letters

Use capital letters for names of people and places

Use punctuation (.?!) correctly

Express feelings about the topic

Start sentences with different words

Use interesting describing words

Use phonics knowledge to write sounds in the order they hear them including digraphs and trigraphs.

Spell some words correctly (Essential list 1-2 and some from list 3-4)

Write all letters the correct way.

Reread writing to check it makes sense

Underline some words and check spelling

Check full stops and capital letters have been used

1P (At Level 1)

Plan writing with a picture

Write two or more sentences

Put a full stop at the end of a sentence

Start a sentence with a capital letter

Try new interesting words

Begin sentences with different words

Write some small words

Write letters around the right way.

Write some middle sounds

Write the sounds in the order they hear them.

Use word endings? s, ed, ing.

Use word cards to help them write.

Reread writing to check it makes sense.

Improve writing by adding some more detail

I look forward to hearing back from your experiences.  I actually think that the foundation skills cover most of the subjects we teach at Stage 1.  These are the skills learners need prior to beginning formal learning.   While I have them for writing, they could apply to general thinking skills needed to learn.

I have used several resources to collate this list. 

References 
Te Whariki.  
Yolanda Sorryl Phonics programme   
PMP programme.  
Barbara Brand   
Developmental writing charts.  
Vygotsky in Action in the Early Years.  The key to learning curriculum.  By Galina Dolya.
Free to Learn. By Peter Grey.

Learning Through Play Environment

I teach at Haeata Community Campus, East side of Christchurch, New Zealand.

This year we want to become more meaningful in the way we use our spaces.  Hikuawa (Year 1-2 - Age 5 and 6), make up one team of 9 teachers (some covering release and reading discovery teachers) and 90 Ākonga (learners).

We work in an innovative learning environment and take up half of one Hapori (building) which is designed to hold 300 students.  The other half is made up of Komanawa our bilingual provision.

Following are some photos showing how we have purposefully set up space to enable us to deliver our Haeata Curriculum.

Our quiet space designed for Ākonga to have a quiet space to be.  Comfortable, low lighting, sensory.  The hanging egg chair adds gentle movement.  Ākonga are encouraged to use this space to calm down, have a rest and refresh.

Clipboards are available everywhere.  Here a student has written about bean seeds in the garden.

Our Kai (food) area.  This is where the Ākonga can cook.  Where they can eat food.  They can choose to eat at a table or sit on a mat.  Ākonga are encouraged to go here to eat their Kai (food).

An area set aside for communication fluency - numeracy, reading,writing, digital communication.  Holds many of our books.  This will be valuable when we begin our Kaupapa Ako (main) Workshops.  Workshops invite (no child is made to go) Ākonga to learn specific goals from for example, their personalized education plan or maybe a new skill they would like to try.

Art and craft - open shelves so the Ākonga can choose materials they would like to use for their learning.

Construction, plenty of room for spreading out.

Dramatic play space.

One of our two glass classrooms with air conditioning.   Shut the door and you are in a quiet room.  Used for a variety of purposes such as collaboration, dramatic play, and being quiet or noisy.

You can just see our learning narrative journals.   

Construction area.

Outside with the mud kitchen.

An outside tray for exploration.  The Ākonga are free to move outside as they need to.  Our backyard is fully fenced. 

Planning in a learning through play environment

It is not easy to plan for play.  Over the last three years, I have been experimenting with different approaches to planning, here is where I am at the moment.

I love Leslie Allen's planning diagram because it shows in a picture form how many different things we have to think about as teachers.

I have been challenged over the holidays to think about learning.   Thanks, David.
What is learning?  What comes first teaching or learning?

If it is learning, how do we plan for it?

Planning for most of us was/is the thing you have to do because management wants to see it, and is what they told us makes us a 'real' teacher, and helps us to think about the really complex process of learning.  Somehow it is meant to prove we are teaching or not.  I think planning should only be done if you find it useful and if it has a purpose.

Some say teachers need to know what and why they are teaching and plan for it first, otherwise kids won't learn.  How do things change in planning when the learning comes first?  Who is the planning for? Useful planning should help us to focus on the learning relationship.

I've come to realize that learning is complex.  It doesn't happen just because I write a 3-week unit.  It doesn't mean a child has learned something or not because they could or couldn't do it on the JAM test.  Learning happens in relationship with others.  Ako describes learning as being shared among all the people involved with the learner: friends, whanau, teachers, and community.  Ako is teaching, learning and reflecting. Lorraine Sands from ELP writes recently, "This is a theory (socio-cultural), that focuses learning as the driver of development, not development driving learning."  We are so used to having a goal and planning for the learner to achieve the goal. We teach first expecting the child to learn.  Teaching isn't wrong, just maybe wrongly placed in the learning process?  I think that this type of goal learning is most effective when embedded in real life learning that is driven by the learner. 

What type of plan would be flexible enough to be useful in facilitating Ako?

I need planning tools that zoom out and see the big plan (long-term plan) and then zoom in to see the specific learning goals of each student.  I also need something which enables me to prepare for play and one which records what happened in play.  (When I use the wordplay, that for me is learning.  The question is what learning is happening?)

I continue to play with planning.  Basically, like everything in teaching it is trial and error.  I love the fact that I can play with ideas and trial different ways of recording learning.

At the moment, I use the following;

1.  Play plan (adapted from  Longworth Education)  Provides a wide zoom lens on what could/is happening overall, but also some detailed observations after they have happened.  Provides a place for reflection.  Shows the ongoing journey of learning overall.  Provides me with a list of resources that might be helpful.  I can also think about the learning in regards to different curriculums, and our overall big goals in learning.
2. Learning Story examples (Margaret Carr, ELP, local Early Childhood Centres).  These provide detail of the learning in a real-life context.  They are the most useful form of planning I do.  They are also where I intend to put most of my effort this year.   Learning stories shine a light on Ako.  They help me see myself as a teacher and a learner in the context of learners, whanau, and community.  Learning stories have been the key to my development as a teacher in play.  They really are the whole package. They include the whanau, the environment, the roles of learners and teachers.  Simply put they capture learning, making it visible.  I have found that I spend time in curriculum documents finding links to what the students have shown me.   Typically Learning stories are used to record dispositional learning, but I use them for both dispositional and academic type learning.  For flexibility in personalizing the learning journey, there is no better tool.
3.  Explicit planning for each student.  This is where I use testing to confirm what I see in the play or to give me some more explicit information. This is for me in my teacher role so I can upskill myself on different ways of planning about the best way I could help the student to learn a specific skill. I share these goals with the student if they are ready or interested.  This is also where some really specific and exact teaching can come in to help with learning if needed.  This is especially true for children with specific learning needs.

I hope this has been helpful.  The most important thing is that you continue to experiment with your planning.  I hope you can see planning as a tool for learning.   Keep it useful, keep it real.   Its all about the learning.

The power of noticing learning

Dr Margaret Carr, developer of learning stories in New Zealand,  says that in any one day there are 936 learning moments that a child takes part in.  936 moments a day.  936 opportunities to notice, recognise and respond.

Noticing is a valuable skill in the learning through play environment.  Te Whariki reminds us of the importance noticing plays in learning.

What do you notice about your students learning?  As I learn to teach in a play based environment, noticing has become essential. As my focus as a teacher has moved away from teacher directed learning and assessment, to student driven I have been amazed at what I have seen.

What is important to notice?

Firstly, I build relationships with students, without this step, I wouldn't know what is important, what is unusual or what to notice.

When this has occurred, I take note.  That is why I love learning stories so much.  They help me in my noticing.

Let me give you an example.

Belonging

The students who I spend most of my time with are my Puna Ako group.  The group assigned to me, the ones close to my heart.  We have had a tumultuous journey,  and at the end of Term 2, we celebrated 6 weeks where no one ran away from our learning area.  Putting this into context, learning was focused on relationships.  Looking through Te Whariki's woven values, these would be Belonging and Wellbeing and the New Zealand Curriculum, Key Competencies.

Exploring

One day some rocks turned up at school.  They were an extension of our water table, where we had sand and water.  Some children had fun playing with the sand by making dams, building water falls and playing an imaginary game.  Keegan saw the rocks and asked for a hammer.  He started to hammer the rocks.  He kept at this for some time.  He told me about the treasure he found inside.

Exploring

The opening up of rocks was an activity that other children tried.  They came back to it time and time again, until we didn't have many rocks left.

I thought about the rocks.  The last time I had given rocks much thought was when I gave a speech at the age of 9 on the different types of rocks. I would need to do some googling.

I noticed how the children were so excited about their finds within the rocks.  I wondered, if I was to get more rocks that were different and set up a bit of a provocation, would they notice?

The rocks from the 'rock shop'.

The Provocation

The noticing and wondering.

Lining up smallest to biggest.

Going Deeper

I used our Haeata Inquiry process to frame the provocation.  From Awakening of curiosity to navigating our way to exploring, discovering and communicating.  The first part, was already achieved, the students were curious.  I just added to what I thought they might be interested in and waited to see.  I asked them if they had any questions.  In my space, the children learn through play most of the day.  So I made myself available to be at the rocks when I saw someone interested.

There were two really incredible questions that I was able to capture and write as learning stories.

Jim asks "Why do sponges have holes?"

Jim finds out why
Steve melts rock

If you have time, have a read.  They tell in detail two student's learning journeys so far.

They show some pretty revealing thinking and link to many of our Haeata Values and Dispositions.

Where to from here?

We have plenty of rocks left.   Steve continues to investigate the temperatures and fires.  A road trip is planned to find a place where there are very smooth rocks and where rocks are showing in the hillside.  More will be added to the provocations around fossils.  We will ask our secondary colleagues to come and spend some time investigating rock hardness and how that is measured.

Keys to success

Notice what the children are interested in.  Put out a provocation.  Listen to the questions and support these by going on a journey with the children.  Resource.  Learn alongside.  Capture in a learning story, linking to the New Zealand Curriculum, Te Whariki or school curriculum.  Share with the whanau and children,  go for another spin around the block and see where else you end up.

Have fun!

Inspiring a love of learning

Some of the learners I teach at Haeata Community Campus have arrived without a passion to learn. I'm sure you have learners like that as well.  It seems their interest in learning has been switched off.

 Or has it?

I've been captivated by this short video clip from Tom Shea this week. In  The Importance of Play
Tom shares a very simple message.  85% of the brain has been developed by the age of 7.   Play supports children to develop an innate interest in learning.  Enjoyment is crucial in the recipe of learning.  Play is about being able to choose.  The player might choose to be sedentary. They might choose to be active.  It is the choice that means they have a chance to develop a love of learning.

Have we as a society set in concrete expectations of what should be learnt in order to be successful? As a child if you don't do what is being asked then you get the message pretty quickly that you don't fit. I think you might work out that you are not liked or loved.  You might even believe that you are worthless.  Do learners enjoy being dis-regulated?  Do they enjoy not fitting in?  Do they enjoy being violent? Do they enjoy saying no? Do they enjoy sitting not doing anything?  I don't think so.  At the centre of it all we are hard wired to fit in, to please and to play.

I am fortunate to teach learners who don't fit inside the 'normal' box.  My learners make their presence known.  Some of their life experiences so far, have de-sensitised them to having a passion for doing much.  It is so tempting to want to control them.  To force them to behave.  To force them to learn.  To blame.

Teachers who aim to control students' behaviour—rather than helping them control it themselves—undermine the very elements that are essential for motivation: autonomy, a sense of competence, and a capacity to relate to others.

What if everything you knew about discipling kids was wrong

This article has also impacted me this week.  It gives me hope.

Motivation, a love of learning, is gained by choice and by being given autonomy.  Play, free play is all about choice and autonomy.  It is all about being able to have control over your own body and self. Some learners need help to work out what is getting in the way of being able to do this.

"The goal is to get to the root of the problem, not to discipline a kid for the way his brain is wired." 

What hope!  

Providing free choice to some of my learners really didn't go down too well.  I think they found it shocking. I think they felt almost lost.  Maybe I wonder, were they used to being prescribed what to do and by this action told what constitutes learning? Did this have the effect of making them less curious? Many of them told me they hated reading, writing and maths. Some have learning differences which haven't allowed them to be what school needs them to be in order to fit in.  They would start a task they choose but struggle to finish it.  Sometimes they would just do a task quickly, looking disinterested.  Some didn't know how to begin.  Many just left the learning space.

My experience shows me that often students when given choice don't know what to do with it.  This doesn't mean they don't want it.  Instead, it is up to me to facilitate and enable them to come up with strategies to help them to gain autonomy.  In order to help them to have a sense of competence, I am able to reframe small steps as being successful.  To help them relate to others, I coach them in how to manage anger, how to recognise when someone else has had enough and how to ask for what they need. Providing a free play environment is helping to facilitate this. 

When they are hooked in, when they are interested in learning, then I can build on that.  As an educator of young children, I believe my main job is to inspire a love of learning.   When I see that spark I celebrate and jump right in with the learner.  I pack resources around that spark.  

Sometimes, when there is just nothing, I recognise they need the chance to just be.  To relax and unwind.  To maybe play in water, to feel slime or draw randomly.  Sometimes, they seem to sabotage their own progress. But learning to play again, or maybe even for the first time is not easy. It takes time.  I still believe that it takes opportunity to make mistakes, to fail but to look up and see those who love and appreciate you, affirm you.  

I remember one of my learners.  They wandered around for a few weeks, not doing much of anything but annoying others and destroying stuff.  Then one day, they asked me a question.  The next day they began to talk.  Then I saw them sitting down playing with some cars.  They had self-directed themselves.  What progress.

This is such a fundamental shift for us educators isn't it. It appears risky. Trusting the child, giving opportunity to fail and not looking like a typical teacher.  And I think that maybe that is why starting on a play based learning journey is so difficult for many educators. If we liken education to building a house, finding the floor of some of our learners is like digging out past junk, it is hard work and rarely appealing. However, when the child begins to build the walls, you look up and you celebrate when you see no ceiling, because that reminds you of their unlimited future. 

Here is an article I have just read which fits in really well with this blog.
Toy free kindergarten (up to age of 6)