Francie's+Additions+May+10,+2009

The Playscapers is designed as a media product with insight into the developmental characteristics of children aged six to nine who will know, understand and be able to do things in their world as it relates to environmental change. The age appropriate, eco-friendly concepts featured in each show episode’s activities help kids go “from screen to green,” transferring what they’ve seen on our show from inside their homes to applying these concepts to their worlds and environments in real life. From a cognitive developmental point of view, this transference happens when children watch and imitate what they’ve observed in order to understand and make meaning of the world on their own. Our “first you view” then you “do” television show format follows along the lines of developmental, constructivist learning theorists who ascribe that children  learn by constructing knowledge of the world on their own. Dr. Tom DeMaio, a constructivist, educational psychologist interviewed best sums this up in the following quote: // “Play is a way to figure out the world, and kids need to play to experience the kinds of problems that they are going to be grappling with in life, whether it is the physical world, the interpersonal world, the personal world, and the things that they can figure out for themselves. Play needs to be expressed—it is exploration. Locking that (exploration) up is not a good thing. Kids need to explore...(Personal Communication, May 8, 2009). //  According to DeMaio, children transfer understanding through observation, problem solving and play through exploring the physical world. The Playscapers television show provides such an outlet for this exploration experience to happen. Children can watch the television show, observe the experiments and learning activities as they observe older children aged 10-12 that they later model the activity on their own after viewing our educational television show. Playscapers educational content will include both real life narratives and fun animated sequences that highlight each episode’s featured “lesson.” The idea is that viewers of the television show can go out, try the same lesson activity on their own, and are given a first-hand opportunity to make meaning of that knowledge on their own in their own environments. The survey of the literature investigated the concept of play as it relates to child development. The survey found works in Drama education that included discussions on imitation and role-play. In his book, __Play, Drama and Thought__, Richard Courtney distinguishes play as it relates to dramatic play which is play which contains impersonation and/or identification.” (Courtney, R., 1974, p. I) Here, Courtney distinguishes play as “an activity pursued merely because we enjoy it” (Courtney, R. 1974) and is often found with what Aristotle called “mimesis” or imitation. Courtney defines dramatic play as role-play activities much the way that drama educator Nellie McCaslin defines creative “role-play” in her book, __Creative Drama In the Classroom,__ where she discusses various theories of play. (McCaslin, N., 1990, p. 40). To McCaslin, though, a practicing theatre educator, play in her context means that children participate in role play activities where they imaginatively assume and imitate characters that they create. (McCaslin, 1990, p. 105). To McCaslin, theatre games and improvisation game activities are designed to encourage the freedom of self-expression through imaginative role play activities. To Courtney and McCaslin as “process oriented” theatre practitioners, this process of playing and learning by doing is the basis of child developmental learning. Thus, the children in our target age group of 6-9 years old will pursue hands-on, educational activities at home that they imitate by watching The Playscapers television show. The show’s four student leaders and a chipmunk engage viewers to make meaning of their world by becoming “citizen scientists” learning and promoting healthy messages of environmental stewardship. ** The Playscapers Television Show: Medium and Format Rationale as Our Choice for this Product  ** The concern that children are not playing in tree houses anymore, enjoying nature as much and that children are sitting in front of screens too much--“videophilia versus biophilia- interacting only to “virtual play” and not “authentic play,” -(Louv, R. 2005)- is what initially moved our team into the concept of “from screen to green.” The underlying premise behind using a television show to achieve a direct learning experience to children across America as they learn from experiments and from fun learning activities on television such as learning how to plant tomatoes on their own outdoors and taking a “Navy shower,” indoors to save water for example, is what is what inspired “The Playscapers.” Here, the overall program’s design is taking advantage of children’s television viewing habits, the easy access to television sets in most American households using a child-friendly approach to storytelling using live action blended in with an animated sequence to accomplish an overall theme of environmental stewardship.
 * Developmental Characteristics of Target-Aged Children, aged 6-9 **