Past projects 3
It's All Fun and Games
Funded Aug 31, 2023With my deepest gratitude for your genorisity, thank you for support the building of a board game library for my classroom and for all of my school, Lake Anne Elementary. The board game library has always been popular at my school, and with the influx of new games as a result of your genorisity, not only has it has reached a new apex in popularity, I have finally been able to bring games into other teacher's classrooms. More kids than ever have been coming into game lunches. My after school board game club has kicked off and is going strong. And, more importantly, classroom teachers have now invited me in to thier classrooms with games that they feel could help thier students. I have brought games to specifically support literacy, creative thinking, critical thinking, and science concepts. And all this in the context of devoleping social and executive functioning skills, and in the context of fun. Becase, as I truly believe, "Play is the brain's favorite way to learn."
My next steps are to continue to build on the success of bringing games into other teacher's rooms by word of mouth and advocating for games in the classroom. In January, I have been asked to help out with an after-school "Math Night" by hosting math games, many of which were bought directly from your donations, and later a "Literacy Night". Then, working with my school's PTA, I will be hosting a "Board Game Night" to share these games with the families of the school and build even further awareness of the game library and the after-school game club.
This has grown so much because of your genorous donation, and I truly thank you.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Johnson
This classroom project was brought to life by LOFT and 2 other donors.It's All Fun and Games.
Funded Mar 1, 2022Earlier this year, you donated to helping to build the board game library at Lake Anne Elementary. Since then, the end of last year saw the re-introduction of board gaming at Lake Anne post-Covid, followed by summer break. Now that a new year has begun at Lake Anne, the board game library is back and stronger than ever, in large part to your generous donations. I want to give my sincere gratitude to your generous donations to help this happen.
Already by October, the game library has taken off to great success. As the library has grown, an even larger number students have been coming to play games during lunch than before the pandemic. Now that a large number of students have already learned a good amount of games, I am able to start to delve into some of the more complex games that can still fit into the time of a lunch period.
The lending game library has also been a fantastic success.. So far this year (since school started in August), the most commonly checked out game has been Bring Your Own Book, a "player judge" game similar to Apples to Apples where players look for humorous answers to questions by looking in books. But many other games have been borrowed from the shelves and been returned with stories of how the games went over in their classrooms.
I have also been spending time in SACC, or after school day care, to teach games there. That is an opportunity to have a longer time period for kids to learn, and those kids are then able to borrow those games from the game library and teach others, or help teach others during lunch games.
As a next step, now that lunch time games are in full swing, I intend to start reaching out to students who don't typically engage in games. In the past, prior to the pandemic, I reached out to students who had more difficulty in the classroom and invited them to lunch time games, and had great success. Students who may have come across with more tension in the classroom responded wonderfully to games as their guards came down and tensions melted while playing games.
I am also working with the PTA to bring back after school clubs (which had closed down during the pandemic) to get students into longer and more complex games. Additionally, the spring of this school year will see the return of Family Game Night, when the whole cafeteria will be open to families in the community coming to learn and play the games in the collection. The goal by then is to have so many of the students be so familiar with the games that they can teach them to their friends and families.
My longer term goal has always been to bring games out of my room and into other teachers' rooms. I have been invited into rooms to help teach games during indoor recess on rainy days. But for the larger goal is of advocating for the educational value of games for students who could use them. This this end, I have created this spreadsheet just below to share and be used by the teachers at Lake Anne. This spreadsheet is a collection of the games currently in the Lake Anne Game Library, made possible in part from your generous donations. The games are searchable by recommended age and length of play, contain a brief description, and a few tags on their education benefit. As our school is heavily engage in SEL (Social Emotional Learning) and Fairfax County emphasizes the qualities of A Portrait of a Graduate, my next step here is to add those qualities to the spreadsheet for the games that meet those particualr criteria. Which is a surprising percentage of the games we have. So many games hit so many of the qualities of both SEL and Portrait of a Graduate.
This is the link for all the games in the Lake Anne Game Library, sponsored in part by your donations.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qxzTaxC34b4s01L0RL_NcM3B75VzqtMVKdxteq21-Jw/edit?usp=sharing
I absolutely believe in the power of getting people together around a table for a shared gaming experience. For both the social growth and also the educational benefits that are inherent to many of the games we have. Thank you again for your generous donations. It means the world to me that you were willing to help out this vision, and I intend to honor your generosity by continuing to expand the reach and impact of board games at Lake Anne.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Johnson
This classroom project was brought to life by Valhalla Foundation and 4 other donors.It's All Fun and Games
Funded Sep 27, 2022Thank you so very much for your support in building the game library at Lake Anne. Its just the beginning of the year and alreay game lunches are in full swing and game rentals from the game library have begun. I so appreciate your help in continuing to build this.”
With gratitude,
Mr. Johnson