ThinkFun.com Writer And ‘Fun Expert’ Interview

Welcome to SmartPlay!

As Maria Montessori once said, “Play is the child’s work.”  Well, I either never fully grew up or am just about the luckiest adult ever, because Play, in one form or another, continues to be my work every day!  A former elementary school teacher, I now work at ThinkFun, the company behind Rush Hour and Zingo!, as head of Education and New Media.  Central to everything I do is the need to think creatively and problem solve on the fly.  These are skills every child needs to handle the challenges of tomorrow… and this drives the work I do every day.

As parents and teachers, we have endless opportunities to celebrate our kids’ achievements.  We cheer our children on at spelling bees, science fairs, on the sidelines at soccer games, and in folding chairs at piano recitals – celebrating the product of much training and hard work.  As important as it is to recognize end results, we need to highlight and honor the thinking processes along the way.

Parents and teachers today have a huge job to do – we must equip kids to tackle 21st century challenges, preparing them for careers that have yet to be imagined… pretty daunting!  As Daniel Pink so articulately says, “We need to prepare kids for their future, not our past.”

So how the heck do we do it?!  To tackle what lies ahead, the most valuable thing we can teach children is how to be creative thinkers and problem solvers… and what better way to build these 21st century skills than through play?!  I launched SmartPlay to connect with like-minded thinkers, like the Carissa here at GoodNCrazy.com, who believe that learning should be FUN!

I’m thrilled to be a part of this community!  Let’s get the dialogue rolling and have some fun… we just might learn something along the way!

Charlotte Fixler (@SmartPlayBlog) Is the author of the blog ThinkFun.com/smartplayblog. She calls herself an expert in FUN! Aren’t you glad you now know who to talk to about your summer time boredom issues! Hurry, she’s waiting to answer your questions…

Here are some suggestions she gave me when I asked about Summer Science ideas:

She said…

I’m no science buff, (I am a former teacher!), but here are a couple ideas that come to mind

• Exploring Gardens – learning the parts of flowers -lots of fun crafts you can find for this– leaf rubbings, taking inventory of plant colors (kids have a sheet with 5 colors listed, make a tally each time they spot a color while taking a neighborhood walk)
• Weather -  (collecting rainfall, graphing daily weather patterns, temperature, learning about clouds, weather forecasting, etc)
• Animals – Zoo visit, research project, paper mache models, masks, safari Rush Hour (from Thinkfun.com of course!)