Name: The Promise of Play!
Start: 2024-07-17T18:30:0012:00
End: 2024-07-17T20:30:0012:00
Location: Greerton Early Learning Centre

“Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul”
I share Stuart Brown’s book title with you because it gives such a visual interpretation of the way play grows a child’s brain, builds empathy, fosters social learning and generates creativity and innovation. Alison Gopnik’s comments are challenging too. “Our job is not to shape our children’s minds; it is to let those minds explore all the possibilities that the world allows”.
Teachers’ practise that honours free play honours the aspirations of Te Whāriki as we are all asked to enable agentic children to have choices about what to learn, when, and with whom. This workshop provides practical examples of how to design environments for authentic free play to unfold. We will explore how to use Learning Stories to analyse the dispositions and working theories that are strengthened when children immerse themselves in play.