Adults At Play

My new friends at Latika Vihar requested that I do a 2 afternoon workshop focusing on child led activities. We talked about process vs. product, and how to provide opportunities for children to think for themselves, instead of the staff just dictating how each activity should go. This is hard stuff for adults, and especially for we teachers who are use to educating our students based on a dictated program.
First we needed to learn how to play as adults. I took a few ideas from my friends at Yes! And…..Camp (www.yesandcamp.org) and got us playing some games. Above are pictures of “The Human Knot”, “2 Chair Improve”, and “The Monster Game”. After some play time we developed ideas to bring to the kids, and thought about projects that left room for the children to think for themselves and be creative. It was hard for some of the staff to not to teach something they already knew. They thought it would be easier to teach this way because they knew what the “product” should look like. But what we got to discuss was that coming with an idea and giving some direction for an activity can feel risky, but in the end can be less work for the adults, and way more fun for the kids. Here are 4 ideas the staff came up with. Some ideas came easily, while others needed to be fleshed out by asking the question "where is the child's opportunity to think and create for themselves?", but the end results were good especially considering they only had 15 minutes of planning:
-Become a living piece of art. Create and freeze a scene where you are the characters, props, action and landscape.
-Think of a dance based on the letters of the alphabet.
-Create a song that talks about the limbs on your body.
-What beat comes from playing hopscotch? Create a song to go with that.
I’m really proud of the staff at LV for pushing through this workshop with me. We had a lot of fun and, I think, a few growing pains but it’s exciting to see where this new thought process will bring them/us over the next few months.