Kids and Ninja Warriors

A few weeks ago, I shared a YouTube video with my wife Julee (first grade teacher).  The video showed a young kid running through a "Ninja Warrior" style obstacle course in her backyard.  Julee thought this would be fun for her students, and as we talked about it, she thought, "What better way to teach kids about some math?"  She came up with a bunch of concepts - the idea of time (how long is a minute), greater than, less than....  I suggested some ideas about data collection, and the project was on.  She designed an obstacle course around the school playground, I built a balance beam, and we set the thing up just before school.

Almost immediately, kids started asking questions.  "What's going on?"  "What's this?"  "Can I play?"  I only answered the last question.  "Sure - but don't hang on the hula hoop - you can just jump through it."  One student asked, "What do we do?"  Another answered immediately "It's an obstacle course!"  In no time at all, the students organized, figured out a path (it wasn't the path we'd designed), and they were off and running.

While watching them play, try out the obstacles, and invent ways to use the stuff we'd laid out along with the playground equipment, I was reminded about the nature of play.  We don't let kids do it much.  And they love it.  No prompting, no rules, no feedback from me or any adults, they were able to figure out a way to put into their play, in an organized fashion, all this new stuff (cones, hoops, balance beam, a few ropes, a hula hoop) that just showed up.  

When Julee brought her students out to actually run the course, it was the same thing - they had a blast, and they all cheered for each other, took data on how everyone ran through the course, and before we could prompt them for anything, were already at work analyzing the data and making some conclusions.

Kids from Julee's teaching partner's class also came out, and they made signs to cheer on those running the course.  No prompting, no cajoling, just kids getting a chance to move, think, be creative, learn some things, and have fun.

Isn't that what school is all about?