Every child loves toys and our Kindergarten students were delighted to be part of a ‘toy’ learning expedition.

To learn how toys have changed over time, children conducted interviews with grandparents to find out what toys they played with when they were young and discussed whether or not those toys are still around today, and what changes may have happened, such as materials and functions.

Then the students looked at Teddy bears and studied their history. The next step was to create a “Famous Teddy Bears Through History” book.

One interesting part of the expedition was to learn about toys in other cultures. Students exchanged letters with school children in Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta) in Africa. They located the United States and Burkina Faso on a map and took a ‘virtual trip’ to Africa and created a scrapbook about their adventure.

While learning about different toys, they enjoyed the visit of a toy designer from Fisher Price, an American company responsible for designing many popular toys through the years. And each student became a toy maker by creating their own Teddy bear.

And lastly, every child was assigned a letter of the alphabet and had to choose a toy that corresponded to that letter (initial letter sound) and become an expert. Students then created posters that were distributed to their families and to other classrooms.

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