Play in home learning?

The children in my class continue to astound me with the creativity they bring to their home learning.

This week two children decided to make a collaborative movie. They wrote scripts, enlisted parents as characters, developed costumes,  had an older brother film them and then reflected on the attitudes they were using in the script.

It was interesting to see that one of the scenarios came from a documentary I had shown the children the previous week about free-range play in schools.

The children re-created a scene and built that into their movie.

But this is the way children learn.

They have experiences which pique their interest  enough to become part of their play.  A visit to a shop, can be a store built at home. My nephew is constantly playing builder after his Dad remodelled his house.

By not insisting on a certain format for home learning the children have used ideas from class and simply documented their play.

Lesson – Even at 8-9 years old children still needed to be playing.