Welcome, Knowledge Explorers
This is “Learning Is a Ball Theater’s” Playbook connected to the video, “The Mission.” This learning is based on play. Play? At the Kuriosity Lab, we have discovered that people learn just as much—if not more—through play. Ask yourself how we train our country’s most skilled defenders? Air Force pilots learn to fly these most powerful machines through simulation–an adult word for play. Simulations are vitally important in learning to become a surgeon as well. Famed educator, Joseph Chilton Pearce, lucidly stated: “There is no part of play where you’re not learning.” Whether it’s understanding your role in a team game, learning your opponents tendencies, or seeing who can be counted on to play fair.
This Playbook contains games, questions, and experiments. It’s a relative to “Questions They Didn’t Ask in School” card game. If a game, question, or experiment interests you, it may be worth your while to explore it more in depth. Below are a few questions that might spark some of your nearly 100 billion brain cells to fire together. When brain cells fire together, they wire together. It’s a basic way to learn.
- If you could decide on a mission any place on Earth in any time period, where would you go, and what would you like to accomplish?
- Do you know how to deliberately create a new game any time you want?
- Ever change a rule to a game? What happened?
- What if you took the viewpoint that everything in life could be considered a game? How might that change the way you act?
BASICS of EVERY GAME: MR PET
Every game has five common elements: Mission, Rules, Players, Environment and Tools or MR PET.
We used these to have fun learning math. Yes, math can be fun!
What kind of game could you create using these carts as a tool?
What would be the Mission? What are the Rules? Anyone there can be a Player? The Environment is one of our Kuriosity Labs. And the Tools are the carts.
One Mission could be to take one of these carts around the yellow duct tale rectangle as fast as you can and time yourself. How could you determine your speed around the course?
Let’s say the distance around the yellow duct rectangle was 60 feet. And you made it around in 6 seconds. How fast did you go? There’s a formula. Rate, or how fast = Distance/Time. Or, how fast = 60 feet/6 seconds or 10 feet per second. That’s quick! And if you want to beat your speed of 10 per second, try again.
https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/172520532
And which cart would you choose for speed? Can the one with the big front wheel go faster?
Or, how about creating a game using light? Can you guess how we got this affect?
- Or, how about creating a game using glow sticks and prisms?
Here’s another game of questions. Some of these are from our “Questions They Didn’t Ask in School” series.
- What enjoyable surprise would you like to experience again?
- If you could write a hit song, or direct an award winning movie, what would it be about?
- Do you know if you’re more of a whole-to-parts learner or a parts-to-whole? Why would this knowledge be important in the way you learn in school and life?
- If you could create any new course in school, what would it be?
Why This Way of Learning Works
If you like an activity, game, or experiment, there’s a much greater chance that you will repeat it. And if you repeat something you enjoy, an emotional connection is created. Emotions and repetition are the two most effective ways to place skills and concepts into long-term memory—where they are never forgotten. And when you repeat something you enjoy, it can easily become play. And that make you want to do it again and again!
The Playbook focuses one how to enjoyably learn math and English through being physically active. Ready for a road test?
Create a game with one ball or more, and choose two other items as tools in the game.
Create a Mission, so players know when they win
Create Rules. In baseball, a rule is going to first base first; not third.
Identify the Players. In the game of school the players include teachers, admin and students. And parents can sometimes qualify as players as well.
Choose an Environment. It’s easier if you go outside. More space and less objects to interfere.
Tools: ball(s) and your choice of two other tools like a chair or frisbee or…
Try out the game to see how it plays.
What was the most fun part of the game?
Try changing a rule in the game. See what happens.
MR PET in Other Areas of Life
And the five elements of a game, or MR PET, can help explain how to become popular. The Mission and the Rules for the “Popularity Game” are very different from the “Friendship Game.”
Can you see the differences?
What kind of game would you be interested in or understanding better?
