Embarking on Playful Inquiry - Day 1

I am embarking on a whole new path. The path of Playful Inquiry has been a long time coming. I have been doing parts of it for years. I have experienced WHY we need to have children learn through play. I guess I just needed the theory, the background, someone to show me the way.

What is Playful Inquiry? According to Teaching Preschool Partners and founders of Opal School at the Portland Children's Museum, Playful Inquiry "describes the human capacity to seek and make meaning of experiences through a playful stance toward learning - a stance that welcomes curiosity, imagination, and the enchanting experiences found in play."

It allows children to incorporate all senses as they learn, creates healthy habits of mind, and invites children to become thinkers, planners, doers, and reflectors. It authentically creates the skills needed to be in school (and in life) before or as they get there (physically and mentally).

Playful Inquiry is the step we lost along the way. It is the step that makes school fun, learning fun, being social fun. When we skipped this step we saw a rise in severe negative behaviors in preschool and Kindergarten. We saw more reading problems. We saw more anxiety and stress. Why did we skip this step? One word: Assessments. We needed Kindergarteners to perform. We thought that starting them earlier would make learning accelerate. What did accelerate? Everything we didn't want. Something had to be done.

So, here I am. I am following in the footsteps of Opal School, Kristi Mraz, and even Mr. Rogers. How, why, why now? Well, I hope to work through these questions. I hope to use my time during Comprehensive Distance Learning (CDL) as a soft landing, and find my way to giving students back what they lost.