Introduction
Our project
Our goals for our play projects are to improve student well-being and their imagination and creativity by promoting play opportunities for our intermediate students in academic and non-academic environments. These could include: Lego Robotics, coding, creation of outdoor green play space, story workshop, house teams, provocation kits, puppetry and student electives.
Our school is uniquely next to a mountain forest, and classes often go outside to explore learn through play in the forest, however we wanted to create a dedicated space that had elements of a classroom, yet
situated outdoors. We refurbished an unused space by adding wooden log stumps, painted a concrete wall with chalkboard paint, and then we built a shed with shelves and purchased durable tools for open-ended play (ie: big building gear/blocks, shovels, buckets, slacklines, etc). Since April 2023, the classes and students have been using the space to engage in learning through play.
Discover more about our project below and find out what students had to say about it !
Tell us about your team and your school community.
We are a dual-track elementary school with approximately 360 students with a diverse student population. Our team is comprised of two grade 3/4 English classes, one grade 4/5 English class and 1 grade 4/5 French Immersion class. Our school values learning through purposeful play, building community and building character through the Hudson HAWK attributes (honour, adaptability, wonder, kindness).
Tell us about the importance of learning through play for your team and for your students.
Learning through play has been embraced at the primary level at our school and we are looking to offer our students the same valuable learning experiences as they move into the older grades. We feel that this type of play allows us to take our learning outdoors into our environment, allows students to explore their curiosities, gives students agency in their learning, promotes self-regulation and allows students to make sense of their learning through past experiences and connections.
Tell us about your interest in joining the Canadian Playful Schools Network.
The CPSN provides us with more intentionality to create play opportunities for our older students and to seek out and try out more opportunities for play than what has been done in the past. The framework also gives us the opportunity to reflect on the impacts of play in our classrooms and permission to set aside time for purposeful play in our classrooms.