What do we DO in the playroom?

When people ask me what I do and I tell them, "I run an educational playroom," they often ask me to elaborate. I tell them that the playroom is a unique place to learn and grow, not only because the curriculum and learning environment are "green," but also because my pedagogic stance is also very progressive.

The playroom is a place where children can play and discover the joy of learning through hands-on, kinesthetic experiences. All of the instructional strategies are scientifically research-based and have been proven effective with children of varying abilities. And my teaching reflects an eclectic pedagogy—one that supports problem-based learning opportunities, allows children to develop a strong conceptual foundation, and tailors learning experiences to each child’s individual needs.

Ultimately, my goal is to help children develop into thoughtful, well-rounded citizens of the world who have the ability to think creatively, solve problems analytically, and work collaboratively—skills necessary for our children to be successful in the 21st century.

For some folks, this is enough explanation, but for others, they ask, "Yeah, but what do you DO in the playroom." This is the question I love to answer! I tell people that we wrestle with, contemplate, and explore ideas. We listen, look, touch, and feel. And we also do a lot of considering...how our actions affect others and the environment, how we feel about the work that we do, why we make the decisions that we do, and how we can solve problems presented to us.

This means that children will dig a little deeper in everything they do. For example, in my Constructing Number Concepts workshops, instead of rote counting, children participate in activities where they visualize number patterns, sort and group objects, organize and compare, and slowly over time, they begin to construct their own understanding about the concept of number, e.g., what exactly 5 means. To most kids, 5 is 5 and nothing more. Well, some may be able to tell you it is before 6 and after 4, but even then they don't really have an understanding of the relationship 5 has with 4 and 6.

But to a child in The Well-Rounded Child Educational Playroom, 5 is 2 and 3, it is 4 and 1, it is even half of ten! A child could tell you that 6 contains 5 with an extra 1. Or, that there are only two sets of "partners" in 5 and one left over. She can draw patterns of 5 that show different ways in which to organize the quantity graphically. The patterns help her "see" a number inside another number. And soon, the child begins to see the patterns in her own environment...the tiles on her bathroom floor, the dots on the back of a ladybug in her garden, and even the eggs in an egg carton.

Experiential learning happens all around us, in the things we do daily. Today, a group of children in my Earth Explorations workshop made an oil slick. We talked about what it looked like and how the oil and water didn't seem to mix. Then, we pondered what might happen if oil was spilled in the ocean. The children asked one another if the oil would sink or float, and where the oil would go. So I encouraged them to consider what might happen to a bird that decided to land in the water and do a little fishing. What would happen to the bird? One little girl looked at me quizzically and then said, "Well, it [the oil] would get all over the bird."

"How do you know?" I asked. She didn't know, so I left her to ponder the question for awhile.

Next, I asked each child to choose an object and attempt to "clean up" our oil spill. One tried a plastic spoon. Another tried using long strips of newspaper. Still another tried a napkin. The little girl who had thought about a bird landing in the oil said, "Oh, this is sticky....the oil would stick to the bird!" And then all the children wondered if the oil would hurt the bird and if it might die.


This is a weighty problem for a small child to consider, but an important one because it led us to discuss our personal habits and what we do with our trash. We then read a book, All the Way to the Ocean and learned about how trash that ends up in the street often flows through storm drains when it rains, and out into the ocean. And this led us to another conversation about what we consider "trash."

Now this all may seem very haphazard to anyone observing our little group...I mean how can we weave so many topics into one 50-minute class? And what connections are the children making to the concepts and among one another?

The short answer is that I anticipate as many possible ways that a conversation may go, or an activity may shape, so that I am prepared for what will pique the children's interest next. And because we work in small groups of 2-6 children, we can on a dime, switch gears and move down a path that supports the children's curiosities. However, learning in this natural, Constructivist environment is often organic and comes from the children, so I watch for key points to facilitate, nudge, or gently encourage a new path, a different line of thinking, or another option.

So what did we do after reading the book? We went through the trash, of course! Okay, so the children just pointed and discussed while I sorted through the trash. On their own, the children came up with two groups that we could sort the objects into: trash and recycling. I placed a comp0st bowl in front of them and asked them to tell me about what they saw in it. Should the contents go in the trash bin or recycling can?

They noticed some ends of green beans, lettuce leaves, some egg shells, and even a banana peel. I asked them, "What should we do with all of these fruits and vegetable parts that we don't eat?" None of them new, except one little girl who had an inkling of an idea.

"We could put the egg shells in the ground!" she exclaimed. So I asked her why would we do that and she pointed out our seeds, now sprouts, that we had started in old egg shells a couple of weeks ago. Aha...a light bulb went on! And so, another opportunity presented itself...a conversation about composting. We talked about one little piece that was stuck to the banana that would not be good for the soil....a bit of plastic.

"What do we do with that?" a little boy asked me.

"I don't know....what do you think?" I responded. The children all thought it could go into the recycling, because of course, it was plastic. I noted that not all plastics are recyclable, so then in horror, all of them said, "Oh no, we'd have to throw it in the trash, and that might get into the ocean and hurt the fish!"

Connections....just when I thought our brains had enough work for the day, one of the boys in the group said, "Miss Cheryl, if trash goes in the ocean, it won't look like that anymore!" He pointed to a photo of a pristine ocean we have hanging in the playroom...so clear it looks like a swimming pool.

And then in a blink of an eye, our class was over. I encouraged the children to tell their families about their experiences today as they hurried out the door. Recounting the day's events is a good way to make the learning their own and extend it into other avenues of their everyday world.

Sometimes it is hard to grasp what we do in the playroom because giving a short explanation about it does not do justice to the children who bring their bright shiny minds into our place of contemplation to question, probe, and wonder. It is my intention though, that families are drawn to the playroom because of how their children feel when they arrive--happy to be there!--and the state in which their children leave--peaceful, contemplative, and yes, still happy!