Homeschooling allows time for creative play: Legos, dragons and Zoobs, oh my!

May 26, 9:14 AMNorfolk Homeschooling ExaminerSherene Silverberg

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     Fire breathing dragon.

The ability to indulge in creative play is one of the most important gifts we can give our children.  Children who indulge in creative play end up being out of the box thinkers and this is a skill our 21st century children will need when they enter the workforce.

My children spend hours upon hours playing with their building toys.  We have Legos, K'nex, Zoobs, Zome Tools, Kapla planks and various motors that have been cannibalized from other toys. (all these construction toys offer educational ideas that allow them to be effectively folded into the homeschool curriculum.   Zome Tools has a model of the month. This month's model was designed by a fellow homeschooler.  Kris's dragonfly model is a celebration of the Divine Proportion in nature.)  Watch this blog as I intend to build this model with the children this week.

Ben and Shira merrily combine different construction sets to build their creations.

This morning they formed the "DPC" (The Dragon Protection Company).  In order to protect a dragon, you first need a dragon. Not a problem to my two little engineers.  They built their own dragon.

The dragon had a motor and a motion sensor in his body that allowed his eyes to flash and his tongue to move.  It's a little difficult to see, but they put strands of gold foil in his mouth. The moving tongue moves the foil and voila, you have fire that he breathes.

They only covered half of their dragon so that we could marvel at their ingenuity by gazing on the innards of their dragon.

Their father was very proud to see that they used a manly tool to keep the skin on the dragon's head - duct tape instead of needle and thread.   My kids have been corrupted already.  Whenever anything needs fixing they bring out the duct tape. 

The skin was made from fabric scraps.  A friend is a big sewer and a few months ago she gave Shira huge bags of fabric scraps.  These scraps are used almost daily for some project or another.

Creative play projects like this make my heart sing.  One of the reasons we chose homeschooling was because we wanted our children to have plenty of time to play and create.

We made the decision to limit their access to commercial television and pop culture and to surround them with open ended construction toys.  We have always chosen toys that allow the children to express their intentions through the toys rather than toys that can only be played with in one way.

We're seeing the rewards of this philosophy. Our children and their friends can play for hours with little or no adult intervention. They can have fun with sticks, string and blankets.  The most used items in our playroom are 3 appliance cartons, blankets, quilts and pillows.  Whenever we have visitors, the children all disappear to the third floor and enter their make believe world where appliance cartons are caves, where blankets form abodes and pillows are rocks, or leaves, or anything else they want them to be.

Another favorite toy are our Kapla planks.  Kapla planks are small, wooden planks that can be built into anything you can imagine.

We love them because 2 year olds can have as much fun building with them as adults.

A favorite activity is seeing how high they can build Kapla towers.  Ben loves to build pirate ships and Shira loves to build Greek and Roman buildings.

According to every child who has played with them in our home, the best part of building with Kapla planks is the destruction of the project.

A quick look through Youtube shows that these children are not alone.

We've started learning about electricity in our homeschool and I look forward to seeing how the children combine circuits into their building projects.

One thing is certain, every time they play with these construction toys, they develop their spatial thinking and creative skills.  Who says play isn't educational?

For more info: Zome Tools  
Kapla planks  
Zoobs  
Lego  
K'nex  
Jane Healy on equipping our children for the uncertain challenges of the future.