This is the second installment of a series on Playlab, a new class at Falk Lab School focused on children’s play. Several times a week, Falk teacher Tegan Ambrose gives Kindergarteners “provocations”—materials with open-ended instructions—and observes their play. Students journal about their play, then discuss these entries with Ambrose.  

Playlab is offered in partnership with Hatch Partners in Play, which created the class alongside educators at Faison K–5, a Pittsburgh Public School, as an equity-focused initiative designed to help educators prioritize extended periods of play. This year, Playlab is running at Faison and at Arsenal PreK–5, as well as at Falk. 

You can read more about the project here, along with a Q&A on Playlab with Katrina Bartow Jacobs, Falk’s research coordinator and an associate professor of practice in Pitt’s School of Education, and School of Education graduate student Hillary Henry. 

One of the most exciting aspects of Playlab is that it’s new for everyone, teachers included. Since the start of the school year, teacher Tegan Ambrose has made a number of adjustments to how she approaches the class. 

“I’m always looking for things that are interesting for them,” she says, “but that I don’t have to do as much hand-holding,” allowing her to sit back and observe children’s play. 

Dominoes are a recent provocation that’s worked well. Some students formed lines of dominoes that they toppled over, while others treated the pieces like small blocks, building houses and other structures. 

“Dominoes are a huge test of patience,” Ambrose says. “Some can handle them and some can’t. Some get very angry if someone bumps their dominoes over. Some just say, ‘OK, I’ll do it again.’ It’s interesting to see how they handle that pressure.” 

One of the biggest projects Ambrose has initiated in Playlab so far this year is a collaborative sculpture project in which she presented a team in each of the two Kindergarten classrooms with a large, shallow box and the same materials—felt bits, Styrofoam, and random pieces of cardboard packing material—and gave them the simple, open-ended directive to make something. 

“As long as they worked together—that was the only parameter,” Ambrose says. 

She was interested in observing how the children tackled the task. Would they talk about what they were doing and work together, or would everyone simply do their own thing? 

One team worked for a few days and then was satisfied with its creation, while the other team kept going for a few weeks. On the team that worked for a longer time, individual children reached their own stopping points and told Ambrose, “I’m done.” 

“It was interesting to see how the two different groups used the materials so differently,” Ambrose says.  

She interviewed the two teams about their sculptures and how they worked together, and had the teams present their sculptures to their classmates. 

That element of reflection has been a major area where Ambrose has noticed students’ change and development. Hatch’s curriculum includes Play Journals, in which children reflect on what they’ve been doing. 

“Just this week I was flipping backward through their journals,” Ambrose says, “and it’s awesome to see some of the growth they’ve already made. Some of their journal entries were so clear and I looked back a few weeks and said, ‘Oh my gosh, this has changed so dramatically.’”   

Ambrose holds conferences with the children on their play journals, making notes on yellow Post-Its that she dates and affixes to the journal pages. Recently, she says, a student was eager to talk to Ambrose about his entry, which was about someone being unkind on the playground. 

“That’s unfortunate,” Ambrose says, “but he used that journaling space to vent a frustration.” 

Among the biggest adjustments she has made, Ambrose says, is managing time and expectations—her own and students’. While her goal for a particular day may be to observe, or to talk with students, there’s always a chance that something can come up to change those plans. 

“I’ve tested myself and will continue to try new things,” she says. “It’s definitely a learning experience for me and the students.”