Structured Play at Wide Hollow STEAM Addresses More Than You Think
Sep 6, 2022
At Wide Hollow STEAM, Kindergarten students participate in structured play on a daily basis. Structured play is playing with a purpose and can target specific skills or objectives for our students. Students may be playing in a small kitchen play area and collecting a specific number of items for a meal, or building a tower out of magnetic tiles and meet certain criteria, or organize items by characteristics, which all address Kindergarten math standards. Students may also program a robot to follow the events of a story as they do a story retell or participate in dramatic play and create dialogue between characters to address literacy and language standards.
Students also have opportunities for unstructured play as well because it lends itself to more creativity and developing imagination. Social and emotional learning is also addressed via structured and unstructured play. Structured play lends itself to conflict resolution, discussion of feelings, and increasing acquisition of language.
Our amazing Kindergarten teachers are also looking for more and more STEAM activities to include in the structured play time. Finally, structured play provides students an opportunity to practice the 4 C’s of 21st Century Learning: communication, collaboration, complex problem-solving, and creativity.
At Wide Hollow STEAM, Kindergarten students participate in structured play on a daily basis. Structured play is playing with a purpose and can target specific skills or objectives for our students. Students may be playing in a small kitchen play area and collecting a specific number of items for a meal, or building a tower out of magnetic tiles and meet certain criteria, or organize items by characteristics, which all address Kindergarten math standards. Students may also program a robot to follow the events of a story as they do a story retell or participate in dramatic play and create dialogue between characters to address literacy and language standards.
Students also have opportunities for unstructured play as well because it lends itself to more creativity and developing imagination. Social and emotional learning is also addressed via structured and unstructured play. Structured play lends itself to conflict resolution, discussion of feelings, and increasing acquisition of language.
Our amazing Kindergarten teachers are also looking for more and more STEAM activities to include in the structured play time. Finally, structured play provides students an opportunity to practice the 4 C’s of 21st Century Learning: communication, collaboration, complex problem-solving, and creativity.