It’s National Day of Play and students at Prairie Ridge Elementary are taking full advantage of it.
Students use math, engineering, science and imagination to create ideas all using cardboard.
“Simple in idea: Get cardboard, get tape and let kids' creativity and their imagination run wild,” Project Manager for Day of Play, Jeff Boor said.
Boor says it’s a school wide event bringing students together to learn, play and create with their hands using cardboard; an idea that came from Caine's Arcade.
“You know I think that we are so tied to technology and I think that one of the first things a kid turns to is the IPad or the electronic device, or the electronics or the video games,” he said. “And I think a lot of times that doesn't bring out the creativity in them.”
Students at Prairie Ridge Elementary took advantage of National 'Day of Play'-making creations all using cardboard!! Details on @TheNowKC pic.twitter.com/aeOHQGtxLU
— Rae Daniel (@RAEtheReporter) November 15, 2016
“Isn't it amazing? It looks like total chaos,” Prairie Ridge Elementary principal, Michelle Hite said with excitement. “But the beauty is they're actually creating and working with teams and they're collaborating!”
Halle Wampler, a 5th grader, is building a rocketship with her team.
“We're gonna go in and have buttons that you can press,” she said.
Halle says it’s been fun putting the creation together.
“I really like my group,” she said. “Just getting together and know the people in my group better and having fun building a rocketship.”
A nice distraction from recent current events.
“I will say that in recent weeks, you can feel a pervasiveness of a certain attitude and gloom over things,” Hite said. “But this shows what can happen when the youngest of minds sit down and talk with eachother, do the planning and truly listen to eachother and then go out to cooperate to make their dreams come true.
Halle and her team did find some parts challenging.
“It was hard to find a box that we could do the triangle for the top of the rocket ship that matched with the regular part of the rocket ship that matched the regular part of the rocketship so that was hard,” she said. “It was hard to cut the boxes.”
But working as a team, they found other ways to make the idea come to life.
“Well we put different pieces of different pieces of different boxes of the triangle and we had an adult cut the boxes,” Halle said.
“It may not happen on their first attempt, or their fourth or their seventh, but it's going to happen eventually and something that they're proud of because they did it together,” Hite said.
“When you work together, you're like building teamwork and it's just good to work together and with other people to get to know them and one another and stuff,” Halle said.
This is the first year Prairie Ridge Elementary has done this event for National Day of Play.
Boor says students had the chance to show off their new creations to their classmates and parents. Afterwards, the projects will be later recycled.
Both Boor and Hite says the event was a community effort in getting cardboard boxes for the students and parents volunteering for the event.
