Year 3/4 Neighbourhood Blog Term 1 Week 6

Preparing for our new Inquiry.

After spending the last few weeks building relationships with the children in the 3/4 Neighbourhood, it is clear that they share a love of play, games, collaborative work and creativity. Children have been creating fantasy worlds, collaborative stories and films/plays. They have also been navigating various online creation spaces such as Canva and Scratch. 

These fantasy worlds will form the basis for upcoming worldbuilding narratives.

Our new Collective Inquiry will spring from these shared interests and curiosities

Play: Imagination and Invention

To orient the children to some of the inital ideas, over the past fortnight they have been inventing a new toy or game to pitch to potential investors, in the style of the TV show ‘Shark Tank’. They have considered the purpose of the toy/game, what would make it appealing to their target audience and how to market it. 

Shark tank toy designs

These are some of the questions that we might explore in the coming weeks and months:

Imagination and play: how can developing imagination and a love of play support children to develop the skills necessary to be the problem solvers of the next generation? 

How and why do we play?

What boundaries do children need to play safely?

What does play look like around the world?

What did play look like in the past?

What happens in our brains when we play?

What new ideas can be found through play?

At what age do people stop playing? (Ask families?)

Do adults still play but in a different way? Do they play with food when they make recipes?

How do you play with people/animals?

Which other species play? 

Make believe and wellbeing

What do we learn about ourselves when we play?

Theatresports/ improvisation

How can we play with language? 

Where is/isn’t play allowed?

Which environments are best for play?

What are children at our school playing and where?

Where SHOULD play be allowed?

What opportunity for invention do we squash when we tell children to stop being silly/playing? 

How does play make us feel? Before/during/after

Please discuss some of these at home with your child to support our learning at school.

We are really looking forward to seeing where our Collective Inquiry takes us as a team this year. 

Enjoy your weekend,

The 3/4 Team