ABOUT US
Just as the ‘de Bono coloured thinking hat‘ suggests, we are educators with an interest in creativity.
Green Hat Workshop was established over a decade ago by primary school teacher and STEM specialist Cam Lee, in order to model and inspire ways of implementing pedagogies of increased child-directed creativity and open ended play.
At Green Hat Workshop we believe in a life of playful experimentation and constant engagement with the elements of our world.
We are dedicated to providing workshops and products that foster lifelong learning and creatively inspire all ages.
Our resources are
- Abundant
- Loose and able to be moved freely
- Require very little explanation
Many of our workshops occur in schools, away from public view however we collect images of artifacts of play and how they are used.
OUR WORKSHOPS
PLANKS
PLANKS are dynamic building blocks designed to inspire creative minds. Totally inclusive, PLANKS encourage a wonderful mix of creativity and skill, social development and imagination.
The flexibility of our PLANKS’ rectangular prism shape and Green Hat Workshop’s philosophy of self directed, play-based learning, provides opportunities for all abilities to participate and to challenge themselves at their own level, enabling participants to simply stack towers of impressive height or to create sophisticated cantilever bridges, 3D shapes and more.
Green Hat PLANKS Workshops offer an abundance of PLANKS, promoting the opportunity to share and celebrate diverse expressions of creativity, Mathematics, Engineering, interpersonal skills and resilience.
MAKING TABLE
Using simple tools and materials, participants make whatever they want at this craft, STEM-play Making Table, resourced with Reverse Art Truck™ resources.
A range of manufacturing offcuts, packaging surplus, wool, plastics, artificial grass, leather, small cardboard boxes and tubes, household recycling, lids, material and paper, as well as a selection of tools such as tape, staplers, textas & glue open the activity to constructive possibilities for all ages.
Design, technology, materials.
Please email us to let us know about your organisation and any ideas you have about how this might work for you.
Email: cam@greenhatworkshop.com.au
LOOSE PARTS
A mix of ‘found’ and manufactured objects curated to give as many prompts for different types of unstructured play as possible.
Green Hat Workshop’s collection of Loose Parts and our Playworker inspired management of the activity make this workshop memborable, enabling children an opportunity to play expressively, dramatically and in ways that feel right to them without excessive risk or adult interferance.
HOW WE WORK
Inspired by Melbourne’s progressive schooling movement of the 1960s and influenced by the field of Playwork, Green Hat Workshop emphasise a play-based, participant led, activity model, where possible. We provide resources, tools and time for participant-directed activity. We create environments that first and foremost authentically engage participants and engender a natural desire for fun and play.
We acknowledge that we are in partnership with our participants during our workshops, enabling and encouraging their natural instinct to play with pattern, aesthetics, order and symmetry, representations of narrative and the world around them, shelter & cubby building and role play as well as comparison and intrinsic challenge and the impulse to provide technological solutions.
Green Hat Workshop’s approach is to work within existing school cultures and in public spaces to empower natural curiosity and creativity in all ages, with as few instructions and rules as possible, thereby engaging all participants at their own level of language adoption, and cognitive and physical ability; be they mature or developing, neurotypical or diverse.
We avoid programs that emphasise content or specify a valued outcome but rather value authentic participant-lead programs that develop environments optimum for shared creativity.
Green Hat Workshop provide simple, abundant, impermanent resources where possible, as we believe this encourages individuals to experiment, share and explore.
We believe:
- Engagement comes first
- We think our way into maturity and competence
- Everyone comes to us with knowledge
- Self-directed play is the best way to learn
- Humans learn when they are ready and cannot be compelled to do so earlier
- The goal of every teacher is to become obsolete*
Cam Lee
General Manager and Pedagogy
With over 30 years experience teaching in Primary Schools across Australia and in the United Kingdom, Cam has been a science communicator, run exploratory mathematics centres, woodwork programs, and worked as a classroom teacher and STEAM specialist from Kindergarten to grade 6. He was a member of the founding Education/Interps Staff at the Melbourne Sealife Centre and has experience curating and supporting Loose Parts in Schools, providing Professional Development and resourcing and linking curriculum to STEM-Play of all kinds.
At Green Hat Workshop Cam specialises in a play-based, self-directed learning model and engages large groups of all ages, in schools and public spaces with blocks and stuff.
Cam is also Operations Manager at Melbourne's iconic Reverse Art Truck Inc. a 40+ year old resource centre that uses a remida or scrap-store model. Previously known as Reverse Garbage, Reverse Art Truck collect resources that are destined for landfill and return them to use through resourcing arts and education.