Teacher Educator Blog | Playful Learning

Take a walk through the UCLA Lab School at the culmination of this school year and you will be transported into an underwater ecosystem. Primary students (1^st and 2^nd graders) have spent the past few months learning and creating an immersive kelp forest art installation. Blue waves float above your head and against the wall entangled with a variety of different types of kelp. It doesn’t take long to realize the species richness in this part of the school as you see a flying fish and seal hanging above and a garibaldi fish peeking from its cave.

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Magical Green Forest–a world where rivers and flowers have magical healing properties; Death Water Rainforest Shell Planet — a magnificent two-story territory where “super kelp” grow indefinitely; Magic Korea/Boston — a snow filled landscape where friendship, bunnies and carrots abound.  These are the enchanting worlds imagined and created by an ECII classroom.

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Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood”
—Fred Rogers

When was the last time you played? What did you do…and how did you feel? As adults, we often associate play as the opposite of work, leading us to feel guilty and unproductive for having those few moments of playfulness and joy. Work is supposed to be serious and structured, right? We find this notion to oppose play to work odd because we see play and playfulness exist in almost every activity we do. Play exists in those moments of joy, curiosities, frustrations, breakthroughs, and challenges that we face in our world every single day.

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