Punahou’s Omidyar K – 1 Neighborhood is a place where imagination comes to life.

Students from the Class of 2024 vividly illustrated the truth of that statement with their Golden Dragon Pizza Café. Last year, kindergarten assistant teacher Megan Abbott ’02 Joswick noticed how avidly and creatively six students pretended to operate a pizza shop. So she helped them take the idea to the next level — another great example of how inquiry-based learning at Punahou inspires students and teachers alike.

For two weeks last spring, the six students — Max, Jessica, Keira, Meigan, Dahlia and Camden — worked out the concept. They named their business, dreamed up a menu, tested recipes and created a currency (so that their classmates could “buy” their homemade product).

On May 2, 2012, opening day finally arrived. The six young entrepreneurs headed to the Neighborhood’s Creative Learning Center to bake the pizza, then it was back to Room 5 to open the restaurant. They added to the fun by serving the food drive-through style, passing the slices through their classroom’s sliding windows. Everyone sat down to eat at tables and chairs overlooking the garden, achieving an outdoor ambience to which the youngsters had given a lot of thought.

The kindergartners were thrilled with the experience and so was Joswick, saying that it was wonderful “to see how you can take so many teachable moments and such a learning opportunity and turn it into something fun and something they love to do.”

The real-life project “helped the students with their problem-solving skills, with their language skills, their focus, their concentration and they felt ownership of the store,” she said. “For me as a teacher, it’s so fun to see them making these connections and bringing it together through play, through cooperation, through teamwork and through their imagination.”

Come along and share the students’ experience in this video produced through Punahou’s Institute for Teaching, Learning and Instructional Innovation, which fosters and shares great teaching.