Today we have an interview with Kristi Mraz to tell us how to make our classrooms more joyful, exciting, and playful!

Kristine Mraz is coauthor—with Alison Porceli and Cheryl Tyler—of the book Purposeful Play
A Teacher’s Guide to Igniting Deep and Joyful Learning Across the Day. She is also the author of the bestselling A Mindset for Learning, as well as (with Marjorie Martinelli) Smarter Charts and Smarter Charts for Math, Science, and Social Studies. Their popular blog chartchums keeps teachers in touch with ongoing and relevant classroom issues and ways to use charts as a support. Chartchums is also on Facebook and on Twitter @chartchums!

Kristi teaches Kindergarten in the New York City Public schools. In addition to writing and teaching, she consults in schools across the country and as far away as Taiwan. She primarily supports teachers in early literacy, play, and inquiry based learning. On the off chance she has free time, you'll find Kristi reading on a couch in Brooklyn with her dog and her husband. You can follow all of her adventures on twitter @MrazKristine or on her blog: kinderconfidential.wordpress.com.

We also share a teaching experience from Allison Hogan, who has taught her class, through playful inquiry, how to be producers and consumers, and then watched them extend the learning at recess as they exchanged sticky note artwork for sticks and rocks. Here are some pictures of the work from Allison's classroom:

We sincerely hope you'll pick up a copy of Kristi's book. It's fabulous! Purchasing the book through this affiliate link helps to support the podcast.

Thank you everyone for listening, and thank you to bensound.com for our theme music. If you enjoy the podcast and can review us on iTunes that would be awesome of you (it will help more people find us)!

Kindergarten Kiosk is a proud member of the Education Podcast Network, a network of podcasts for educators by educators.