Why We Laugh When We Play

Most of the actual work I do is in preparing for the arrival of the kids, and by "work" I mean the kinds of things I'd rather not be doing: the stuff for which I'd wave a magic wand if I could. Once the kids arrive on the scene, however, it's pretty much all play for me, the part of my day I'd not wish away for anything. 

Indeed, sometimes we adults need to deal with certain aspects of cleaning or snack prep or bodily functions that we might identify as "work," but really, if we're going to be a play-based classroom worth its salt, everyone in the room should be playing, children and adults. A roomful of shoulder-to-shoulder learners is one of the key features of a full-on play-based curriculum -- at least the way we do it here at Woodland Park.

Much of what play-based learning is about is making connections, discoveries that come from putting things together then comparing the results to the things we thought we already knew. This is why the exact same environment, the exact same classroom set-up, serves as a learning environment for humans of all ages. We might be starting with the same stuff, but we're not all starting from the same place. A tool, a shovel for instance, may be used by a 2-year-old to make discoveries about the properties of corn starch mixed with water. That same tool may be used by an adult to make discoveries about the properties of that child or children in general or interactions between children and herself in relation to them.

As a child struggles to pull, say, a dinosaur from a cornstarch and water muck, she's experiencing adhesion, leverage, angles, emulsion, tension, moisture, suction, and the flexing of muscles. This is like the mud she found in the same place last week -- damp, gooey, possessing properties attributable to both liquids and solids -- but different as well. And as she plays, connecting what she knows with what she doesn't yet know, the adult makes her own connections between this child and the others she's known. This is like the child she found in the same place a few minutes ago -- persevering, testing, talking -- but different as well. And these connections, these examinations of similarities and differences, the interplay between what is known and unknown, shake the foundations of our metaphors, creating new ones, opening our eyes to mysterious places within ourselves, other people, and the physical world.

We discover there are always new connections to be made: that the more we know, the more there is to know.

When a child crosses the ground from the art table where he's been driving cars through paint and down ramps, hands slimy with red, he shows us all a newly connected world, opening up avenues into the very things we just thought we'd figured out. And as children begin to run back and forth to carry their own fists full of paint to where we're playing, we adults laugh with them from the joy of our own epiphanies, wondering at their wonder. They, the adults, look up at me, their eyes sometimes more than the children alight with the joy of connection, of discovery, "He made pink! We're making pink! Now the dinos are pink!"

And the kids are saying, "Ghost dinos! Pink ghost dinos!" as metaphors take shape, new scaffolding erected, the world changing before our very eyes.

Then someone else comes over from the work bench, still clutching the Duplos he found over there, drawn by the sounds of discovery, and from that curiosity, we then all learn what happens when we drop a block in the pink goo.

I think about connections as I go through the "work" part of my day, trying to anticipate the paths it will take, and every now and then I get to experience the euphoria of being right, of having my best guesses proven in the real world of play-based learning. But that's a rare treat, one I enjoy, but no more so than the ones we all share when we play here together, connecting. Discovery is always unexpected. It's why we laugh when we play.

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