PLAYFUL LEARNING FOR CHILDREN IN INDIAN CONTEXT
The playful product kit with 6 activities to understand light, reflections and shadows.
Abstract
Science is all around us. Everyone enjoys the pleasure of learning about universe and tries to understand it. But, children have an inborn curiosity and yearning to make sense of things,
people and the world around them. Play is a voluntary intrinsically motivated activity being associated with pleasure and enjoyment and it presents the best answer towards learning
for children.
The project is an attempt to facilitate playful learning for children of 11-14 years of age which
can be adapted to different learning environments of Indian context. It has been built on a conceptual framework of children, play and learning. It has explored how an activity (in the
realm of reflections and shadows) can be planned and designed for the learning of a child without using a textbook and without one to all teaching method. Emphasis is to enable experimentation
and creation by children themselves rather than just communication and passiveness towards knowledge. It aims at a solution to enhance sensitivity in realm of light (with reflections and shadows) as well as physical, social, emotional and intellectual development of a child.
The Process
The design process followed stages of research, need identification, design goals, ideation, concept development and final concept over 4.5 months of time.
