Memories of a grade 1 'Way to Play' inquiry: “What are the best ways to play?”

Feeling frustrated about my students’ obsessions with video games and fighting/shooting play at recess, I decided it was time to intentionally explore with my students more creative and imaginative ways to play. I’ve heard it said that “children’s play is their work”;  in this case, purposefully playing was the way we researched to answer the question “What are the best ways to play?”

Read below about how we played (indoors and outdoors) with boxes, paper, paint, and even potatoes; developed social skills along the way; and made cross-curricular connections to math, language, science, visual art, and phys-ed.

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Memories of a ‘Way to Play’ inquiry: “What are the best ways to play?”

I noticed that many students in my class mainly talked about video games with each other, and at recess they constantly played shooting and fighting games based on their video games. I decided to intentionally make opportunities for my students to practise playing with other things besides devices, and to try to facilitate their social skill development through play as well. Our Way to Play inquiry became an experiential research project as we endeavoured to learn “What are the best ways to play?”

I posed the question to my students, and they drew pictures on poster paper to communicate about their favourite non-tech ways to play. I listened to their conversations, which helped guide my thoughts about how to move forward. The play ideas that generated the most enthusiastic discussion were playing with boxes, playing with paper, and playing with paints - so those became our three initial focus areas. I thought about how to make cross-curricular connections to language, math, art, and science, and we set to work - learning how to play.

Indoors, we made creative box projects (castles, cars, dollhouses, robots) and connected these experiences to math (measurement, 2D and 3D geometry) and science (materials/structures).  Outdoors, we went on community walks to look for real-life examples of materials and structures, and to practise identifying, comparing, and describing 2D and 3D shapes. 

We made many kinds of paper crafts and costumes to play with (almost always inspired by images in nonfiction books we’d borrowed from the library). Students presented their paper crafts to the whole class in order to teach others the procedures to make the same crafts if they were interested. I saw a lot of collaboration, creativity, innovation, and problem-solving on a daily basis. One group of students became enthusiastic paper airplane makers, which led to a whole-class media design project . We did outdoor paper airplane contests and lots of airplane math (measuring distance, adding/subtracting/comparing numbers on a number line).

By the time we began playing with paint, we’d already done a lot of science learning about materials. Students wondered about how paint is made and what kinds of materials are in paint. They theorized first that paint is made from coloured foods and flowers, so we tried to make paint using items from nature and colourful food items from home. We wrote procedures about the steps to make our paint. Later, we looked at videos online about how human-made paint is produced. We made posters about the rules we would need to follow to play responsibly with school paints. We practised painting symmetrical designs and designs with patterns. We used different kinds of paints and explored different painting techniques. We finger-painted a class mural about our outdoor learning memories and made the walls of our classroom a beautiful art gallery. 

Students with expertise in different creative areas (boxes, paper crafts, paint) became leaders and teachers who inspired their peers and challenged others’ creativity to grow. The students rarely came to me for help with design or construction problems; they knew which of their peers were the experts who knew best how to help, and they truly valued each other’s knowledge and expertise.

One day, we read a fiction story about a bored girl and a grumpy potato who learned to have fun playing together, and when one student asked if we could play with potatoes (specifically make them go skydiving), we began an extensive potato parachute design project. We drew plans, made our contraptions, tested our designs outside, and made modifications as needed. (That story, “I’m Bored,” became the students’ absolute favorite book in our class collection during this inquiry. (It also led to lots of potato math opportunities.)) 

Outdoors, we practised playing games that were fun yet peaceful. Students took turns being leaders who invented, organized, and communicated rules for new games. We noticed that different kids enjoy different kinds of outdoor play. Some love active games, some love playing with items from nature, and some love imaginary/pretend games. I noticed that students’ conversations were decreasingly about video games and increasingly about the new games and activities they were inventing for themselves. They would say to each other, “I thought of a new game, and it’s peaceful,” which I loved to hear. I saw that extended periods of time to practise playing led to risk-taking as students tried new games and explored new friend groups. Quieter students became more confident to speak up and share ideas, and bossy students learned through real-life experiences (day after day after day) that compromise is often needed to maintain friendships and solve conflicts. The class as a whole became more inclusive and kind, and the students were creating meaningful memories together. 

Every day, the students wrote about their memories in their outdoor learning journals. We also read many fiction stories about characters who learned to play appropriately with others, solve conflicts, be creative and innovative, and find ways to have fun together both indoors and outdoors. We had a lot of valuable conversations as we reflected on stories we read and intentionally debriefed our own play experiences.

My hope had been to eventually teach the students to play simple turn-taking games with each other because some students had asked me if we could learn the best board games to play, but unfortunately our Way to Play inquiry was cut short by the school shutdown due to the second wave of COVID-19. 

(A couple of extra pictures of us playing after the first big snowfall!)