With a passion for play, engineering professor AnnMarie Thomas’ Playful Learning Lab group researches activities like going to the circus and playing with Play-Doh and allows students to explore learning from a child’s perspective.

The Playful Learning Lab projects are meant to produce tangible results that help schools and educators. The research group has many collaborations outside of the lab to get the projects into action including the STEPS program, St. Paul Public Library, Metro Deaf School and more.

“The goal with the Playful Learning Lab is to create things that can be used by other schools, by other parents, other educators, and then distribute them in whatever means makes the most sense,” Thomas said. “So, we often have a lot of websites or videos, but we also do have papers and books.”

One of the projects to come out of the research group is Squishy Circuits. The project combines Play-Doh — or a similar homemade version — with electricity to create an activity that children can use to explore electrical engineering. Thomas said Squishy Circuits is now a company run by a former student.

Thomas believes that having fun is at the root of who we are as humans.

“For me, play is such a key element of the human existence,” Thomas said. “We often think of (play) as being something childish, but I would argue it’s much more childlike, and when you imagine all that children are able to learn in the first five years of their life, it’s kind of mind blowing.”

While considering that importance of fun, Thomas wanted to research a topic that would engage not only students but teachers like herself as well.

“I’ve taught the same classes at St. Thomas, some of them more than 20 times. How do you keep that interesting — for the teacher as well? Because if the teacher isn’t engaged, it’s very hard for students to be engaged,” Thomas said. “I think finding ways that we can find the joy in learning — and play has such inherent joy — I kind of can’t think of anything that would be more intriguing for me to work on.”

The research group consists of 10 to 15 undergraduates and sometimes a few graduates each year from a variety of disciplines. Senior Allison Haugh has been involved in the Playful Learning Lab for three years working with young students at the St. Thomas STEPS Camp, a summer program that allows middle school-aged girls to explore technology and engineering.

As a elementary education major and engineering education minor, this experience has shown Haugh how the projects as well as the people from different fields are able to connect.

“I think it allows us all to learn a little bit from each other, but then also, at least for me, it has allowed me to form deeper respect for these other areas,” Haugh said. “When we all work together, we’re capable of influencing young mind towards engineering in a positive way.”

Though many projects have already come out of the Playful Learning Lab, Thomas hopes to continue their work and that student will continue getting the most out of it that they can.

“In terms of goals, I think it’s for us to continue to be working on new things,” Thomas said. “I care less about the formal publication and more about that the work is getting out there and that the students are getting high level critiques of their work, submitting to conferences, and really getting to see what’s cutting edge and bring that to their work.”

Kassie Vivant can be reached at Viva0001@stthomas.edu