Welcome to Possibilities™. We're here to help you make interest-based learning a reality for children and families where you live!
Possibilities, a project of the Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute, provides parents and practitioners the tools to identify their children's special interests and assets, to match them to exciting resources and opportunities in their child's home and community, and to promote participation in those activities. Possibilities encourages learning that is FUN and ENJOYABLE!
Possibilities promotes CHILD PARTICIPATION in FUN ACTIVITIES based on individual CHILDREN'S INTERESTS. At the intersection of these three elements, FUN and LEARNING happen naturally!
The project focuses on identifying individual children's interests as the starting point for promoting participation in recreation, leisure, and learning activities in children's homes and communities. By emphasizing what children can do and what children have in common, the project's positive, capacity-building approach is naturally appropriate for all children, including children with disabilities.
For details about each element of the Project Model read here...
Children's Interests
Interests are simply the things children like to do, things that they find exciting, motivating, and fun.
In other words, they're the things that
"turn them on!"
Possibilities promotes children's participation in recreation, leisure, and learning activities by focusing on children's interests. Interests serve as the beginning point for selecting activities and learning opportunities a child can enjoy at home and in the community.
Possibilities has several special tools parents or other caregivers can use to help them identify a child's interests:
Spotting My Child's Very Special Interests: A Workbook for Parents is a colorful,
inexpensive, easy-to-use workbook that takes parents step-by-step from interest identification through
planning participation in terrific activities. A short video, Spotting My Child's Very Special Interests:
A Guide for Parents, illustrates how a mother uses the workbook
to plan interest-based learning for her young daughter.
The Possibilities Interest Assessment Interview Protocol is another easy-to-use
tool to help parents or practitioners identify children's interests.
Fun Activities
Possibilities uses a process called community mapping to collect and provide information to parents about activities for child learning and fun that are available in the communities where they live. Community mapping is simply a way to answer two very basic questions:
Possibilities uses a three-step process to map community activities:
Participation
Participation is the third component of the Possibilities model. No matter how clearly we identify a child's interests and no matter how creatively we match them with interesting and fun opportunities and resources, no one benefits from this process until we make it possible for our children to PARTICIPATE—to become fully, actively engaged—in the interest-based activities we've identified together.
Children's Interests + Activities = FUN. This simple formula holds the key to promoting children's PARTICIPATION in recreation, leisure, and learning activities.
Participation occurs in many ways. It can range from enjoying simple do-at-home activities to planning outings to community places like swimming holes, botanical gardens, athletic events, nature centers, amusement parks, bike trails, and more. Participation doesn't have to cost a thing! Both do-at-home and community activities that match children's interests are often easy and inexpensive. At-home participation for a young painter might include painting rocks to look like favorite animals, or the "rock hound" in your family might enjoy organizing his/her collection of rocks and minerals. When child interests are the foundation for choosing recreation, leisure, and learning activities, even the simplest activity can be a great success.
The Possibilities for PARTICIPATION are endless.
A variety of materials designed to help families promote children's interest-based learning and fun have been developed as part of the Possibilities project. These include a colorful array of printable Spotlights handouts ready to customize with information about enjoyable, interest-based learning opportunities in your community; videos that illustrate families' experiences with interest-based fun; reprints of journal articles discussing research findings about the power of interest-based learning; and a specially designed, fill-in-the-blank workbook and an interview protocol created to help families identify child interests.
An extensive collection of exciting, full-color, interest-based newsletters you can customize, download, print, and distribute to families in your community.
Order one or more of our five CDs, each with a different collection of 10 editable Spotlights ideas pages.
More than 50 different Spotlights ideas pages are available. Spotlights highlight specific interest-based activities for children. Each two-page issue is packed with information and creative ideas, fun resources and exciting activities that build on children's interests. Each issue includes room for you to customize the Spotlights with the names, locations, and contact information for related opportunities in your community.
Customize a Spotlights with information about exciting and fun opportunities
for children and families to enjoy interest-based learning in your community!
It's EASY!
Download a completed example: Spotlights on Books
Here's how you can use the editable Spotlights you order:
Before you begin you'll need:
the interest areas covered by the Spotlights. Consult telephone
and city directories, parks and recreation departments, chambers of 
On Page Two, click in the first yellow-outlined text space and type in the names and location
of the relevant community resources you've collected. When this space is filled, click in the
second box and continue entering your information. More than 50 different Spotlights ideas pages are available. Spotlights highlight specific interest-based activities for children. Each two-page issue is packed with information and creative ideas, fun resources and exciting activities that build on children's interests. Each issue includes room for you to customize the Spotlights with the names, locations, and contact information for related opportunities in your community.
Once you experience the power of interest-based fun, you'll want to order more Spotlights interest topics ideas pages. Each of our Spotlights CDs is loaded with 10 different Spotlights, plus complete details about adding custom information to make Spotlights useful and engaging resources for families in your community.
These ready-to-customize Spotlights are grouped into the five interest-category sets:
Set 1: Animals |
Set 2: Arts |
Set 3: Games & Play |
Set 4: Nature |
Set 5: Sports |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Animal Play Animals Birds Bugs/Insects Dinosaurs Dogs Duck Ponds Fishing Horses Pets |
Books/Stories Clay/Ceramics Crafts Dance Classes Dancing Drawing Music Painting Photography Woodworking |
Building Chess Climbing Collecting Dolls Dress Up Hiding Sliding Stacking Swinging |
Camping Digging Exploring Gardening Hiking Nature/Environment Rocks Sand Snow Water |
Balls Baseball Basketball Bowling Golf Gymnastics Jumping Martial Arts Running Soccer |
Spotting My Child's Very Special Interests
This video takes parents step-by-step through a companion workbook to identify their child's interests
and match them with fun, interest-based activities in their homes and communities. The
video illustrates the benefits of interest-based learning by focusing on the experiences of one
lively preschooler and her family. (Click the "Assessment Tools" link above, to view the corresponding workbook.)
Possibilities: A Mother's Story
This short video shows the experiences of a child and his family as part of their involvement in the Possibilities project.
Spotting My Child's Very Special Interests: A Workbook for Parents
This easy-to-use, 16-page workbook helps parents identify their own children's special interests,
match them with appropriate learning opportunities and resources, and make action plans for enabling child
participation in interest-based activities. A 
companion video (listed above) explains how to use the workbook. This workbook is also available in
multiple copies in both English and Spanish.
Possibilities Interest Assessment Interview Protocol
This interview protocol facilitates parent identification of children's interests, selection of
community activities, and promotion of children's participation in community activities. This product is also available in multiple quantities.
Research findings about child learning and participation in interest-based learning opportunities informed the development of the Possibilities project materials. Learn about the Research Foundations that form the background of Possibilities, as well as new findings that resulted from implementation of the Possibilities project. Read about Parent Feedback using the Possibilities approach and materials with their children.
Findings from the evaluation of the Possibilities Project showed that:
Children's Interests
Recreation and Leisure Activities
Child and Parent Benefits
A forthcoming monograph by C.J. Dunst and D. Snyder includes the full evaluation of the Possibilities Project.
Feedback from parents participating in the Possibilities Project illustrate some of the positive outcomes for both children and parents.
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