Efforts to give preschool children a head start on academic skills like reading and mathematics instead rob them of play time both at home and school. Indeed, the scientific evidence suggests that eliminating play from the lives of children is taking preschool education in the wrong direction. This brief but...
Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children’s Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth
Why is it that the best and brightest of our children are arriving at college too burned out to profit from the smorgasbord of intellectual delights that they are offered? Why is it that some preschools and kindergartens have a majority of children struggling to master cognitive tasks that are...
The Recess Project Changemaker’s Guide – Blueprints for a new way to do recess
The Resources Project works with schools to support meaningful, inclusive opportunities for social connection, mindfulness, creativity, and all kinds of play. Their award-winning, evidence-based Recess Project Changemaker's Guide was designed to disrupt the outdated routines and replace them with healthy, inclusive and compassionate interactions. It is the product of a...
Growing Without Schooling Volume 1 (GWS: The Complete Collection)
John Holt (1983–1985) is the author of How Children Learn and How Children Fail, which together have sold over a million and a half copies, and eight other books about children and learning. His work has been translated into more than 40 languages. Once a leading figure in school reform,...
Growing Without Schooling Volume 2
Volume 2 shows homeschooling gaining ground in the public's eye, and these articles reflect the grassroots nature of the movement. Stories about children learning over time; household chores and allowances; computers and television use; how to teach math, reading, and other subjects with patience and clarity, and more fill these...
Growing Without Schooling, Volume 3: The Complete Collection
Volume 3 covers a period when homeschooling was getting more local, national, and international media attention and the growth of the movement comes alive in these pages. Holt's long essay in GWS 32, "Our Legal Situation," addresses this growth and offers surprising advice to those who want to overturn compulsory...
Purposeful Play – A Teacher’s Guide to Igniting Deep and Joyful Learning Across the Day
Play is serious business. Whether it’s reenacting a favorite book (comprehension and close reading), negotiating the rules for a game (speaking and listening), or collaborating over building blocks (college and career readiness and STEM), Kristi Mraz, Alison Porcelli, and Cheryl Tyler see every day how play helps students reach standards...
Swinging Pendulums: Cautionary Tales for Early Childhood Education
Thoughtful essays on topics that affect your daily work with children and their families Navigate through the extreme swings of opinion in educational philosophy, regulations, and practices and focus on the middle ground?a place where common sense and intentional teaching combine in support of high-quality early childhood care and education....
Teach Your Own: The Indispensable Guide to Living and Learning with Children at Home
Today more than one and a half million children are being taught at home by their own parents. In this expanded edition of the book that helped launch the whole movement, Pat Farenga has distilled John Holt’s timeless understanding of the ways children come to understand the world and added...
The Kingdom of Childhood: Growing up at the Sudbury Valley School
What do students say about life at Sudbury Valley? This book is a remarkable series of vivid personal recollections of school, in the words of former students. Drawn from comprehensive, reflective interviews, each account presents a picture of school days from the unique perspective of a student, telling what they...
The Self Respecting Child – Development Through Spontaneous Play
This classic study of the spontaneous play of young children combines vivid and delightful observations with profoundly important insights. Alison Stallibrass, an expert on children's play and the mother of five children, makes clear the importance of uninhibited games and activities, without adult interference, in building a child's skill, judgment,...
eight writers offer inspiration and encouragement for both seasoned and prospective unschoolers.
What If Everybody Understood Child Development? Straight Talk About Bettering Education and Children’s Lives
Rae Pica knows what she’s talking about. With over 35 years in the field of education, she’s realized that what’s missing from our approach to schooling is an understanding of the connection between how children develop and how they learn. In this collection, Pica keeps children front and center as...
together with example and imitation
are pillars on which early learning is based. Freya Jaffke applies these simple principles in practical and sensible ways.
The Play’s the Thing: Teachers’ Roles in Children’s Play
Responding to current debates on the place of play in schools, the authors have extensively revised their groundbreaking book. They explain how and why play is a critical part of children’s development, as well as the central role adults have to promote it. This classic textbook and popular practitioner resource...
Teach, Play, Learn!: How to Create a Purposeful Play-Driven Classroom
In Teach, Play, Learn! educator Adam Peterson shares his insights about the advantages of adopting play-based teaching in today’s schools. Complete with tons of activities that you can use right now, concrete examples, and a pedagogical toolkit, this book will help you transform classic toys and games—and even everyday objects—into...
Strategic Play: The Creative Facilitator’s Guide
Jacqueline Lloyd Smith and Denise Meyerson collectively have over 50 years’ global experience in the design and delivery of incredible learning experiences for clients in the private and public sectors. They have partnered with top tier, medium size, and small corporate clients to produce events that rock. They are now...
has become a serious strategy tool used by some of the worlds best known organisations? And what might be the relevance of this method in your work? LEGO® Serious Play® is the result of 15 years development. A powerful method to solve problems
explore ideas and achieve objectives based on management theory using a toy.
Serious Fun: How Guided Play Extends Children’s Learning (Powerful Playful Learning)
A guide for teachers about the importance of planning learning experiences that integrate child-centered play with rich content-based instruction. Serious Fun emphasizes a teachers’ active role in children’s play in order to guide learning. Organized into two sections, Serious Fun first looks at strategies teachers can use to connect play...
Saving Play: Addressing Standards through Play-Based Learning in Preschool and Kindergarten
Play, academics, and standards can work together with the right strategies and support from educators. Take an active role in child-directed play to guide learning. Become a strong advocate for saving play in early childhood education by empowering teachers to join play and standards, and learn how child-led, open-ended play...