Are you a tinkerer? Tinkering, to most people, implies ‘messing about’ or playing with something: taking physical things apart, or making them, and not always with a set goal in… Read More
Learning By Tinkering
Category: For Parents and Teachers
For Parents and Teachers
Big Letter Hunt
Two two-year-olds were being pushed to the park when one of them pointed up and said: – ”Look, it’s an M’. I looked to where she was pointing, and there… Read More
Thinking Creatively Through Construction
Why should children play through construction? Why is it important that they fail? Having kids build stuff seems like an unremarkable activity, but in reality what’s really involved is much… Read More
Making Time and Space for Free Play in Early Childhood
Take a moment to reflect on what play means to you. What do you remember about playing as a child? What are the spaces that are still vivid in your… Read More
[Ottiya Play Issue] Letter from the Editor, Rufina Park
For many of us, the idea that learning and even education can be playful seems like a paradox. Despite the rise of project-based learning and student-centered teaching practices, we still… Read More
Ottiya Empathy Issue Contributors: Arlene Tucker
As you know, the theme of the third Ottiya Magazine is empathy. What does empathy mean to you? Empathy, for me, is about understanding, listening, and teleporting yourself into another… Read More
Robotics for Empathy: Interview with Nao Kondo
Nao Kondo made the Forbes 30 under 30 Asia 2016 list when she was 20 years old. In high school, she founded a group with five teenage designers to develop… Read More
Ottiya Play Issue Contributors: Piia Martikainen and Susanna Hietaharju
Piia and Susanna are two educators from Finland and they wrote about “Playful learning in Finnish Classrooms” in the Ottiya Play Issue. Learn more about them below. Evelyn: Please write… Read More
Developing Empathy Through Writing
Writing, like any other art form, involves a certain degree of empathy; empathy for a created world and the characters living in that world. My role as an educator is… Read More
Play for Creative Learning: Interview with Mitch Resnick
Mitch Resnick is the Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab and the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research. His research group created Scratch, a visual… Read More