For a while the idea of allowing students time to play and explore with equipment or other experimental setups has been an informal part of the learning in my classrooms. One place I have been doing this since I started teaching is with microscopes. The wonder of microscopes for me has always been seeing the amazing microscopic world around us. Yet, there is nothing more boring than a prepared slide of cork cells. While a water sample from a nearby creek or pond can keep students exploring for hours, as they chase protozoa and other microbes around a slide and in the process gain the fluency of microscopy skills required to go deeper.
More recently I have been trying to be more deliberate in designing learning that involves this element of playful experimentation. One way I have found helps with the planning is to add an extra P (play) to the POE (predict, observe, explain) lesson sequence.
An example of such a lesson is the comparative reaction of sand from Sydney beaches to that of sand from Sydney sandstone with acid (HCl). The beach sand reacts producing bubbles, while the sandstone sand doesn’t. I gave the necessary equipment (sand and acid ) to my year 9 science class and with some basic instruction asked them to first predict what would happen and then explore with the reactions of the different sands and acid. I then gave them microscopes to have a closer look at the sand and asked them to explain the obvious difference in reactions. It was not until some of the students decided to carry out the reaction under the microscope that they spotted the difference between the sands. There are obvious particles present in the beach sand that react while there are others obviously not reacting. And at this point, with the curiosity of the students at its highest, I stepped in with some explicit teaching of reactions between acid and carbonates (shell bits) and the lack of carbonates in Sydney sandstone. We were studying some geology and the learning outcome was about what we can infer about the history and formation of rocks and past environments and not so much the chemistry involved. The hands on problem solving lead to students producing a much better explanation of the differences and a much deeper understanding of the geology involved.
A final reflection is that the playing, predicting and observation do not have to be sequential and that in fact they can occur simultaneously or even in reverse order as observations can lead to new predictions and new play.
EduRuminate 
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