Global School Play Day

I had never heard of Global School Play Day until a few weeks ago, but instantly, I knew my class would be participating. Play is what we are all about. I could talk about the reasoning for this all day but you’ll just have to wait until my book, Teaching Off Trail, comes out in October. :)

The last few weeks have been tough. Assessments and report cards have made our schedule choppy and the kids started feeling a bit of “winteritis,” being quick to frustration with themselves and each other. Today was a perfect day to melt these worries away and simply play.

We had so much fun and best of all, they were learning and growing without even knowing it. At the end of the day, one little girl asked a very telling question.

“Are we gonna do any work today?”

Little did she know about how much work she had already done.

Physical learning. Social learning. Emotional learning. Academic learning. And in a meaningful and memorable way. All chalked up to a day of play.

Here are a few of our play day activities:

-free choice

-vehicle designs based in the book If I Built a Car

-Snow castle creations

-Extra recess of course

-Art material exploration

-Relay races (running, skipping, crab walking, bear crawling, dancing, and silly walking)

-Sight Word Speedway (a game created on the fly)

-Math Manipulative Mania rotations

-Created a music video called Play, based off of MC Hammer’s Pray :)

-A trip to our newly created Loose Parts Lounge

-Natural play