Fort-building kit: Learning through play

For their final master's project, LDT students Jonathan Kleiman and Michael Pope created Hüga Forts, which gives kids the chance to shape their environment and let their imaginations run free. The aim is to make fort-building accessible to children from all walks of life.

Hüga Forts was created by Jonathan Kleiman and Michael Pope as their final master's project in 2013 for the Learning, Design, and Technology program at the Stanford Graduate School of Education.

Here's their summary of what motivated them: “Fort building can be a formative childhood activity. By constructing and governing their own worlds, children gain an experience of control over their environment that few other activities afford. The collaborative and constructive nature of this activity enables children to develop their creative competencies and experiment with social roles. We created Hüga Forts to help make the fort building experience accessible to all children.“