Power of Play

PARCC....honestly, it gives me a headache to just say the word.  On Friday, it was the source of a migraine.
I am not sure about anyone else but the stress is there.  It is real.  It is awful.  And I only teach first grade.

I have been really starting to step back lately and wonder how we got here.  What made me want to go into teaching?  It was not the outcome of test results, for sure.

It was the learning. Real learning.
Some of this real learning smacked me in the face today.

My girls and I decided to head up to Columbus, Ohio to visit my cousin over the weekend.  We met at the Columbus Art Museum.  My cousin said they had a kid section but I was not sure what to expect.  When we walked in, this is what we saw:

Then...we saw hallways and rooms filled with Play, filled with Learning.  My girls were instantly engaged.
They were architects:

They constructed furniture to fit in tiny homes:

 They built bird nests:

They used natural materials:

They were artists:

 There were questions amongst the activities that prompted discussion for us:

 And after 2 hours of engaged children, we were still not completely through the kid section of this art museum!  But we finished our trip by answering what we created, wondered, and learned.

You may be wondering what in the world this type of play has to do with the PARCC or any other assessment.  Probably nothing.  But for a couple hours my head was thinking about the hands on learning that we were doing.  It reminded me of the real learning, the engaged learning that I am always striving for.

It was a good day.