TKG LEARN: The Four Secrets of Playtime That Foster Creative Kids

This article was featured as a resource for our Parent Teachers.  Our intention was to help our PTs support the Four Foundational Pillars of Play and help us create opportunities for our sprouts to meet their full capacity for knowing themselves.  Read the excerpt here:

When children play, design, explore, learn – they need our support though environmental design and collaboration. These four pieces help scaffold the constructivist learning model:

  1. open environment – An open environment is not the same as an enriched one: being open does not mean providing more stimuli. Rather, open environments are those in which the child gets to be the author and the medium is open to interpretation.
  2. flexible tools – Part of being open is being flexible. A crayon can be used for drawing anything, but it can also be melted and re-sculpted into something completely different.
  3. modifiable rules – Our children, generally speaking, have gotten really good at following rules, but where will they learn that sometimes it’s best to break them? We can show them how and encourage them when they do it.
  4. superpowers…the physical and mental skills that we develop to adapt and thrive in a complex world while exploring the creative opportunities made possible by global progress. Fundamentally, they are skills reframed as a type of power within the realm of human possibility and reach. Superpowers are the catalysts that maximize the benefits of the other three foundational pillars.

Read the article that inspires this tool, at Fast Co.

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