Play Workshop Part 1: Remembering the Joy In Play in 40 Minutes with LEGO Enchanted Forest

I had a wonderful opportunity to enter an elementary building in my area for a Monday PD session. We all know how tough Mondays can be especially after teaching all day. It is even tougher here in the midwest when the seasons start to change as people are always a bit more tired than usual.

I was asked to come in to help with a new focus around Innovation. I had a short window of time to work with the educators to spark some new ideas for their classroom. No matter what I do I always try to think about providing a framework or ideas that don’t lead to more work on top of the already burdened educator, but to provide a fresh breath of air that gives them something they can use tomorrow.

In this case I just wanted them to experience the feeling of play and how we can connect that to learning.

The topic was around play and getting ourselves as adults to remember the feeling and joys of play. It is something we don’t do enough of as we get older in our life journey. We started off with an activity I love that I saw online where you create a new handshake with someone in the room. I use this to build new relationships among staff. I challenge them to do the handshakes in the hallways to bring some happiness into the culture of the building. I share how this little action might be the spark your partner needs or maybe a kid seeing the joy in the hallway might be all they need to have a good start to their day.

From there we talked about perception and mindset and dove right into play.

I brought with me four LEGO kits of pieces and challenged each group to work together to build an enchanted forest. I gave them 10 minutes to build and just let them go at it. It was so great watching them laugh, problem solve how to build their ideas, how to connect their ideas with the other members, adapt their original thoughts, and be proud of their work. What I wanted them to gain from this was the joy of building and making and with a purpose.

As soon as we finished the build I had long sheets of paper on the table for them to sketch ideas and build on, but we then took time to brainstorm all the ways in which this build they created could be used in the classroom.

They came up with these ideas

• Ice Breaker Activity
• Art/Create
• Music – Listen to music and create what you hear
• Math – addtion and subtraction lessons, fractions
• Engineering – house and durability
• Visualizing
• Character traits
• setting
• journal prompt for writing after they build
• recreate a time in history
• animal characteristics
• patterns
• area and perimeter
• creative writing
• speaking and listening
• community building of working together and building upon ideas of others
• science and habitats
• Tell a story with LEGO

In the end we had each person create a goal to complete based on the learning of the workshop. They wrote this down on a piece of paper and then exchanged the paper with their high five partner along with doing their new high five handshake. They have the month of October to implement their goal and report to their partner. Their job is to be their accountability partner for their friend as well.

All in all I think it was a good start. I get the chance to come back in December for a follow up session and in the meantime I provided the chance to sign up for a newsletter where I will share out a LEGO build challenge/classroom activity that can be done each week. The goal is to inspire and keep momentum going. Additionally, I hope they will take pictures and share.

LEGO Activity Newsletter

I thought I would open this up to anyone who is interested to feel free to join us! The next activity goes live October 8th.

Purposeful Play with LEGO 

Slides

Here are my slides as images only.

Agenda

If you are curious about the agenda, then here you go!