Let's Imagine!!

A few days a go I was talking with one of the Tel Aviv children and he said, “ I used to need an imagination, but now I have a play-station, so I don’t need an imagination anymore!”

It was funny how frankly he said this comment, how easily he was able to replace an imagination with a new playstation. However, it has made me think even more about how we can create a classroom environment that not only fosters imaginative play, but also encourages a variety of opportunity for students to play, explore and create.

Today we had a day without many of our everyday activities; no waffle blocks or cars or even the sensory table. I love all these activities, and feel as though they all foster imaginative play, but it was nice to do something different. For the first time in a while there was a wonderful game of house in dramatic play and in the reading area. Jacob, Hannah and Eli were a family who lived in our quiet reading tent. Eli was the 16 year old daddy. Hannah was 14 and she was the mommy and Eli was 3 and was the big brother. There was also a baby. They created a sweet family and Dylan, Eliza, Lily and Ezra all joined in throughout their make-believe play. They created a store, and when Eli went shopping he told Hannah to “keep the baby safe while I go shopping.” It was adorable. While this was going on we had a large unstructured art project and together these two projects elevated the creativity and imagination in our classroom, which is something Lauri and I hope to continue to foster throughout the year.