Celebrate Dr. Seuss' Birthday Mar. 2. Form a "Play Date" Book Club

Valerie and I have been friends ever since we sat on the floor in a little local library reading and whispering about Betsy Tasy books, when we were ten years old.

     On "Book TV" last weekend, I saw convicts who looked like they should have been playing in the Super Bowl reading and discussing a book in a Washington, D.C. prison.

     At any age, getting together to read and compare thoughts about books has the same kind of bonding effect and opportunity for open communication as old time quilting bees and barn raisings.

     Inviting one or more friends to bring the same book over for a discussion is just the thing when it's too cold or too hot to play outdoors. Besides stimulating discussion, books might also inspire children to write their own rhymes, draw illustrations, or make up stories. Many kids probably already have Doctor Seuss, Whimpy Kid, and Harry Potter books. One of my favorites, Madeline, might introduce a foreign culture and invite comparisons with school life at home and abroad. A "keyword" internet entry, like "new children's books," could suggest another selection book club members would like to buy.

     Today on the internet, I found Everybody Is Somebody by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver and Come Find Me by Megan Miranda. At their book club, the Washington, D.C. convicts began their meetings by reading a short passage selected by a moderator who also asked a question to begin the discussion. An adult could open a children's book club the same way. In the case of Everybody Is Somebody, I'd be curious to know what young book club members would do if authors were going to visit their schools, and the day they were coming, the book club members were asked to host and introduce the authors at an assembly, but they never had read the authors' books and didn't know anything about the authors or their books.

     Come Find Me is described as a thriller about a teen brother and sister. With trafficking and the case of Jamie Closs in the news, it would be interesting to discuss what students would do if a classmate suddenly disappeared. What would they assume happened to their classmate? What would they do differently, if they made different assumptions?

     Not only friendships, but critical thinking, also can begin with a book.

   

Out-of-this-world App Helps Kids Behave

Shortly after reading about three factors that contribute to a kid's bad behavior, mentioned in The Good News About Bad Behavior by Katherine Reynolds Lewis, I learned about the Space Nation Navigator smartphone app. The book and app go together. Lewis claims a child's bad behavior is related to:

• less play time,
• more social media exposure,
• fewer confidence-boosting real world connections, including household chores.

Finnish-based Space Nation (spacenation.org), a space tourism startup, collaborated with NASA to develop a real life astronaut training app for smartphones. Before downloading Space Nation Navigator, you can preview some of the activities at spacenationnavigator.com. To help develop astronaut skills, new missions and minigames are updated daily. Quizzes help kids discover the science that enables astronauts to travel in space, and physical challenges prepare students to endure space travel.

     Space Nation participants enter a global competition to earn badges and prizes, including the grand prize: a trip for four to the moonlike scenery in Iceland, where Apollo astronauts trained. Eventually, the Space Nation Astronaut Program aims to launch one candidate into space every year.

     For other space-related activities for kids, see the earlier post, "Space Explorers."

Kids Helping Kids

Kids can trade their active play (running, jumping, climbing) for food needed by malnourished kids  around the world. To record their movements, kids do need to wear a wrist band, available for $39.99  at unicefkidpower.org. Maybe kids can work out a plan for sharing a band with each other on different days of the week. Lots more information is available at the UNICEF site.

Under "Kid Power,"  a program sponsored by UNICEF, 200,000 kids already have provided
6.4 million packets of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) to save the lives of more than 40,000 malnourished children. Schools, scout troops, summer camps. Little League teams, and families all can join the fun and feeling of service to those who need their help.

Play Book: Retell Tales with a Twist

Tell the same old stories in a new way at a campfire, a party, in class, or at a sleepover. Trent Hergenrader came up with the idea of involving children in Role Playing Games based on familiar books. Although characters, plot, setting, and objects retain some elements of the original stories, "what if" questions challenge kids to go off in new directions.

     The idea is to ask questions that lead children to develop their own story twists. If Cinderella didn't go to the ball with her step sisters, what could she have done to improve her situation if she stayed home? Why might Cinderella's fairy godmother be too busy to come to her aid with a gown and coach? Instead of getting free help from the elves, what changes could the shoemaker make in his business in order to hire employees for pay?

     Thought provoking questions can be based on any book a child reads. In his text, The Multiplayer Classroom, Lee Sheldon goes so far as to show how to convert stories into foreign language games. I prefer to use fairy tales to introduce what some may consider fan fiction, fiction by readers who write their own versions of a book. Every country has its own fairy tales, and, since generation after generation has read them, young and/or old can participate in the "what if" process.

     In the musical, Wicked, Gregory Maguire's take on the Wizard of Oz, good friends were recast in later life as good and bad witches. Cinderella's slipper wasn't glass until Disney magic changed it. (What if she had worn sneakers?) But Maguire and Disney should not be the only ones to reimagine beloved childhood tales. Critical thinkers around the world can come up with their own modern twists. It's fun. And, as the Finnish saying goes (See the earlier post, "Learning Can Be Fun."), "Those things you learn without joy you will forget easily."

Recess Differs Around the World

As seen by photographer, James Mollison, in his new book, Playground, how students play, learn, and live is very different around the world.

     In Tokyo, Japan, children in clean shirts and shorts play in a gym with plenty of space under a roof that opens and closes. At school in Hull, UK, young men in uniforms of white shirts with navy sweaters and pants fool around in a brick courtyard. Recess in Africa is quite different. Hundreds of students in drab uniforms stand around in the dirt in front of their ramshackle school in Nairobi, Kenya. In Freetown, Sierra Leone, students in blue shirts and dark shorts share their recess with pigs in a stream.

     Sitting at outdoor ping pong and chess tables, students in Tel Aviv, Israel, wear military uniforms, while the dress code on the students standing around outdoors in a cement lot in Bethlehem, West Bank, is blue shirts and dark pants.

     Outdoors in Karvag, Averoy, Norway, active students in sweaters spend their recesses climbing trees in a wooded lot. Some African children also like to climb trees in their free time.

Learning Can Be Fun

Do longer school days and longer school years promote learning? Only, if they include time for play (and the playground is not an asphalt parking lot).

A growing body of research suggests play provides an important learning experience at any stage of a student's life. Besides, moving develops a body's core strength which enables children to pay attention and learn, and research also finds kids can develop language, math, and social skills while interacting with each other. In Finnish kindergartens, something new happens every day: Monday might have a field trip, ball game, or running activity; Friday, songs and stations of choice, such as making forts with sheets, selling ice cream (paper scoops pasted on a stick and plastic coins used for change), or doing arts and crafts.  You have to wonder about China's academic schools that do not set aside any time for gym or exercise classes. Promising Olympic athletes go to separate schools.

Finland has a saying, "Those things you learn without joy you will forget easily." When it rains a bit, Finnish kindergarteners put on their rubber boots, grab shovels, and make dams in the mud. Before entering first grade, at Swiss Waldkindergartens, Canada's all-day kindergartens, and at some schools in Washington state, Vermont, and Brooklyn, four to seven year olds have child-directed free play outdoors in all kinds of weather. In  contrast, a survey found 7 out of 10 children in the UK spend less time outside than prisoners.

Play at the Nordahl Grieg Upper Secondary School takes a different form, video games. At Mind/Shift on July 21, 2014, Tina Barseghian called attention to Paul Darvasi's article about this Norwegian high school, where Tobias Staaby uses the video game, The Walking Dead, to pose an ethical question. Of 10 survivors, who should receive the last four pieces of food? Students were asked to use what they had learned about situational ethics, utilitarianism, or consequentialism to justify their choices.

 At the same school, the history simulation video game, Civilization IV, which gives students an opportunity to make decisions that leaders have to make about setting up a government, legal system, labor laws, economy, and religious options, has been used to teach English and Social Studies. Those who were unfamiliar with the game's complexities learned from students who were pros. Lin Holvik, principal of the school, always has viewed video games as a tool to foster collaboration and an appreciation for the "art of failure."

Common Sense Graphite, a company that evaluates the learning content of computer games, gives high praise to the following:
Elegy for a Dead World
Better than other English lessons, students visit alien planets inspired by romance poets, write prose and poetry about the lost civilizations they find there, and share their literary works with other students.
Never Alone
A cultural game that incorporates stories from the Inupiat people of Alaska that demonstrate how students need to cooperate with nature to win.
Valiant Hearts
Invites students to apply facts from the history of World War I to critique war in general.

Other video games and their subject applications include:

     Portal 2: Physics
     The Last of Us: Literature
     Republia Times: Writing, Journalism, Social Studies
     Minecraft EDU: Virtual building blocks to construct a landmark or environment (Also see the earlier post, "Build a Global Icon.")

Another type of play to consider is the role playing used in the Model UN game mentioned in the earlier blog post, "Know the Issues." Also see the later blog post, "Convert Stories into Foreign Language Games."