This trimester we put on our researcher hats and dove deep into play. We used principles from AnjiPlay, a play philosophy founded in China, to inspire ideas for a playground renovation. The “ordinary” items we have introduced on the playground have inspired many different ideas and conversations about why play is important. We launched with the mentor text, Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea, in order to make connections to our own playground renovation project. Inspired by ordinary objects added to the playground and using sentence frames taken from the mentor text, students were able to compose persuasive letters written to our school community on why we should add their ideas to our playground and why play is important! Throughout the project, we discovered different SEL powers we use during play such as teamwork and bravery. As students tracked their “Play Powers” and created 3D models of their “Big Ideas,” they explored math concepts like shapes and graphing.