1st Annual True Play Conference, May 2019 : library makers

Jul 3, 2019

1st Annual True Play Conference, May 2019

This past May I had the incredibly good fortune to be able to return to Anji County, China for a third time, this time to attend the First Annual True Play Conference. I was extra excited that this time I was able to bring along the amazing Holly Storck-Post who is my Anji Play partner extraordinaire (I am SO grateful for her love of spreadsheets and google drive wizardry!) and we were thrilled to be joined by the director of Madison Public Library, Greg Mickells and his wife.

We toured six different Anji kindergartens over the course of two days (whew!) and as always, I learned new things. One of my big takeaways this time was that the schools of Anji are constantly changing and evolving and always in response to the children -- the teachers are paying such close attention to what is engaging the children and thinking about what changes to the school might enable them to delve even deeper. They went so far as to add new HILLS to the play areas this time! In the photo below, the kids were discovering that if they laid ladders end-to-end like this down a hill that they could sled down the hill much more quickly.

Perhaps the most rewarding part of this trip was being able to watch my colleagues fall in love with Anji Play just as I did on my first trip. Look at the smiles on their faces:

I was also extremely honored to be asked to speak about the Wild Rumpus program during the conference. There were about 300 people in the audience but I didn't find out until later that the live broadcast was estimated to have reached about 4 million viewers! (gulp!)

We are very honored that Madison, Wisconsin has been chosen as the site for the Second Annual True Play Conference on July 10-12, 2020 and are excited to host it along with One City Early Learning Center, El Mundo de Ninos, and other friends of Anji Play here in Madison.