Meeting 5: April 2024

PL.A.i group April 23, 2024

April 23, 2024

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Play & Connect

We had a couple new attendees at our meeting this month, so we used our play time to connect with each other and share a rose, thorn, and bud.

Folks shared "buds" of getting close to the end of the school year, spring's arrival (almost), and some excitement around upcoming studies with their children (a garden study and a new "critter of the month").

Some "thorns" related to changing classroom or grade level teams, there being always so much to do (like laundry), and the search for research funding.

"Roses" included seeing family, some personal successes (soup!), new projects with children, and collaborative experiences with colleagues (the panel both Mara and Ben were on a couple weeks ago).

A Playful Look at Documentation

Guiding question:

How can natural materials inspire a move to new types of play?

Jerry shared some documentation from that day of his kindergarteners engaged in a new center choice about seeds.

We reflected on the materials, incorporation of literacy and numeracy, and wondered about collaboration.

Some suggestions for next steps included:

use a digital microscope to enlarge the seeds and offer a new way of seeing them
video/audio record to hear more of the language he described
ask the children about their work and probe their thinking about the details they included in their representations

Jerry was excited to share about one student in particular who unexpectedly was the most engaged with this new material after having only shown extended interest in building Bumblebee (transformer) with Legos.

Discussion

We stayed together again to discuss some words from a conversation Ben had with Matt Karlsen and Susan McKay of the Center for Playful Inquiry:

“I don't think that the goal is a universal attitude about spiders - trying to make sure everyone loves (or hates) spiders. Living in the Anthropocene involves living in a world where best paths forward are often not clear, so we each need to decide what values we want to guide us. Coming into contact with others' stories about spiders - scary, fantastic, wonderful, icky, and awesome - is a source of tension which leads to creativity and learning. We need to help children stay engaged, to listen, and to play to create new possibilities - and one way to help them do that is to avoid the norming of a singular attitude.”

- Matt Karlsen, Studio for Playful Inquiry

Some big ideas and questions emerged:

personal experiences as diverse AND all valid
where dichotomies arise from - are they socialized?
NOT having to pick one side of the dichotomy (don't need to vote, according to Tiziana Filippini, but rather engage in dialogue to allow everyone to "win" and come to an agreement)
how our values come into play, without us forcing them upon children
why does tension lead to creativity and learning? is it about open-mindedness?
why do "new possibilities" matter in the Anthropocene?

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