Learning Through Play at Maharat Camp

Last September, the Scientific Center, Kuwait (TSCK) erupted with gasps and giggles as excited young students raced around its aquarium and discovery center. While the students conducted science experiments, told stories, and played games, they also learned skills to help them catch up to grade level before school started.

قالت أبرار الموسى ، مديرة برنامج العلوم والرياضيات بالوكالة في Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences: “كان التلاميذ يلعبون، لكنهم في الحقيقة كانوا يتعلمون أيضا”.

The activities were part of Maharat Camp, a two-week-long day camp for students ages 7 to 10 organized by KFAS, utilizing publications from the Advancement of Sciences Publishing and Distribution (ASPD), and held at the TSCK. The camp focused on teaching math, science, English, and Arabic based on learning gaps identified by the Kuwait Ministry of Education.

Farah Alkhawajah, an elementary-level English teacher at a government school in Kuwait City, said she observed these learning gaps when her students returned to in-person learning after COVID-19 school closures. “Because of COVID and the use of online technology, children used less paper and pencil, so their writing skills decreased,” Alkhawajah said. “Reading also wasn’t practiced much during COVID-19 because some parents didn’t have the ability to teach English or Arabic.”

Almoosa said when her team began brainstorming ways to help students catch up, TSCK came to mind. “There are lots of resources there for hands-on activities and play-based learning,” she said. ASPD contributed learning materials on themes connected to the amenities at the TSCK.

Alkhawajah was also an instructor at Maharat Camp. She used the aquarium and desert animal exhibition to teach her elementary-level English students. They learned about letters using animal names and wrote stories about the creatures they encountered. “They graduated from the camp with much more knowledge than they would have from a regular classroom,” Alkhawajah said.

For the instructors, too, working in a more creative environment was refreshing and allowed them to develop and test new approaches to teaching. “I loved that at Maharat Camp, we had the freedom to teach without strict regulations or rules,” Alkhawajah said. Even several months later, Almoosa said she still hears from teachers about how their experiences at Maharat Camp improved their classroom teaching.

The program also provided learning opportunities for a third cohort: 15- to 17-year-old students who volunteered to help the instructors implement their lesson plans while practicing 21st-century skills. “We tried to push them to communicate, cooperate, learn leadership, and express themselves,” said Almoosa.

Based on student surveys and instructor feedback, Maharat Camp was a huge success. It will be hosted twice in 2023. “The results were impressive,” said Almoosa. “It was great to see the major changes in students.”

By Marianne Dhenin