Play Based Learning with the Owls

Red Fox Community School
Jun 25
2 min read

by Sarah Post

Springtime in the Owls classroom is full of activity and play–two kinds of play! Owls continue to infuse play into all aspects of their day and we write and perform our own play for the community to enjoy.

We love to play in the Owls room: it is a part of every aspect of our day. Owls look forward to imaginative dramatic play outside in the snowscape during winter and in the mud puddles in spring. Inside the classroom we play while building fabric forts and cities out of blocks. Play is important for so many reasons, but the biggest reason for Owls is that it’s engaging and fun!

We play with sounds and with numbers. Counting how many bottle caps we collected this winter was exciting–every time someone added to our collection we counted the whole lot. We counted 126 bottle caps in total, then we used them to play with and add to our art projects. Another counting activity that was a big hit was counting how many pull tabs from soda cans we collected. With the help of Hawks and Eagles, we counted 2,242 pull tabs! It was amazing to see all the tabs counted in groups of 100. Owls just finished learning all the motions for each sound of the alphabet. Learning the motion from the program Sounds in Motion is valuable to Owls, because it’s another mode of input for letter sounds. Each motion relates to the letter sound’s pitch, duration and how the mouth, teeth and tongue work to make the sound. Owls use the motions when listening for sounds to write and blend sounds to read.

Our all school play this year was a culmination of our animal studies. It’s a fun and engaging way to share all that we have learned. We researched, wrote and performed our play, Extirpated, Not Forgotten: Three Amazing Tales. We also made our props and costumes. The whole experience of creating our play from idea to product is a good example of how much we value the creative process at Red Fox. The result was a wonderfully creative, fact-filled and funny play that everyone was proud to share.