Inside the Super Novas: How do kids make learning fun?

Letters – Learning – Games

Mash together

• studying starting word sounds,
• emergent writing,
• a child’s desire to learn through play,

…and the Super Novas invent a new game.

When given the opportunity for free play, kids in the Super Novas classroom invented a game. They wrote letters on sticky notes and pasted them around the room. A “D” went on the closet door, a “G” went on the box of gloves, “F” found its way onto a friend’s cubby, and so on. They had been learning about starting word sounds, now they figured out how to use their new knowledge. The notes became the “hider” in a special version of hide and seek.

As a kid, games are fun, but none are as exciting as the ones made up right on the spot. When your teacher gives you the freedom to think, explore and create your own rules, the fun is amplified! That is how learning comes from the inside out…

Four year olds, & fives, are innately industrious and classrooms must be emotionally safe to allow them to take innovative risk, such as creating new games.

We believe this method prepares children for the thinking they will be asked to do later in life, more than the rote memorization of reciting the alphabet or completing a worksheet would do.