ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 addresses the importance of promoting young children’s emergent interests in building and design through everyday play practices as they work to solve problems and explore the properties of physical materials. Design-based learning is presented to readers as a form of project-based learning in which students learn what they need to learn in a just-in-time fashion while working to solve challenges and explore new ideas and ways of thinking. This work is based upon the enactment of guided, play-based learning as a supportive pedagogical approach involving playful, child-directed actions along with some degree of adult guidance and scaffolded learning objectives. The chapter shares multiple examples of school to home design-based learning experiences that utilize everyday materials.
