Our PLAYshops are dedicated to playful learning with creative materials. Using a maker-centered learning framework, we explore tinkering, collaboration, and design with a variety of tools and technologies. Each PLAYshop invites participants to share their own ideas, artifacts, stories, and experiences. We’ll use this collaborative experience to explore how to design learning-through-making experiences that are interest-driven and equitable for young people.
Playshop activities are best suited for children ages 4 and up.
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Doors open at 8:30am with a light breakfast. Programming commences 9am - 12pm.All Playshops are hosted in the new AIMS Maker Studio located at 1595 S Chestnut Ave, Fresno, CA 93702 on the main campus of Fresno Pacific University.
All learning is embodied. Learners draw on bodily resources as they develop conceptual understanding grounded in physical environments.
Integrated STEAM experiences are critical for today’s learners.
Play is a vehicle for learning that supports imagination, creativity, and productive cycles of failure.
Narratives and storytelling throughout play support meaning-making and language development.
Mathematics and science are culturally-embedded practices. Learning opportunities should be culturally-relevant and inclusive of multimodal ways of knowing and doing.
Objectives:
Explore the integration between Art and Mathematics involving tessellations.
Learn the steps involved in creating your own tessellation.
Design, create, and share your very own tessellation with the other participants.
Understand the forces involved in construction.
Build simple structures like a bridge and a tower
Build a more complex object utilizing tensegrity
What characters and stories do we see in the shadows?
Explore shadows.
Make shapes and design with shadows.
Build a light box and use it to explore the art and science of light.
Tinker with various light sources, colors of light, combinations of colors, and the shadows that can be produced.
Aims Center for Math and Science Education