Serenity Prayer

For more than a decade, I prepared for my days with children as an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting took place in the room across the hallway. I didn't intentionally listen in, but over the years I grew to feel that I was, in a way, a part of their group. 

At the end of each meeting, they would stand together in a circle, holding hands to recite what is known as the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Over the years, I came to appreciate that prayer as an inspiring way to start, not just a school day, but any day.

So much of the world is out of our control. The news is full of things we can't control. We might do the little individual things we can by way of ending war, fighting plague, or mitigating climate change, and maybe, just maybe, our small behaviors will make a difference. But we'll never really know. We vote, we write blog posts, we attend marches, rallies, and protests, all of which afford us the opportunity to at least feel like we have some modicum of control over things, but ultimately and perhaps despairingly, we all know it is out of our individual hands.

I often find myself thinking of Russian General Mikhail Kutuzov as envisioned by Leo Tolstoy in his masterpiece novel War and Peace. The general understood that at the end of the day, the war against Napoleon would be won or lost based not on individual heroism or genius strategy, but rather by the individual actions of both soldiers and citizens; that history was not about the behavior of great leaders, but rather the day-to-day, fight-or-flight, this-or-that, decisions made by the humans going about making lives work for themselves and those around them.

In other words, I must accept that I cannot end the war, but I can have the courage to be a pacifist in my own life. I cannot end plague, but I can help prevent its spread in my own corner of the world. I cannot save the planet, but I can live as gently on this earth as possible. These are at least things I can hope to control. I can learn more. I can talk to others about my experience. I can even share my fears with them, but at the end of the day, the only thing over which I can ever hope to have control is myself. And even that can be a serious challenge, as all those AA stories will attest.

We are all seeking, if not actual control, at least the feeling of control in our lives. This is a challenge because the universe is chaotic and ultimately unknowable. It can be frightening to contemplate how little control we have. 

When I heard that Serenity Prayer each morning, I recited it along with them. 

One place that adults so often feel they can exert their power is in their relationships with young children. Indeed, there are many who feel that controlling children is central to their role. I recall a colleague telling me the story of an educator who didn't like that some of her students wore their pajamas or played with toys or moved off-camera during their online remote "learning" sessions during the pandemic. It made her feel out of control so she would phone the children's parents to have them act as her surrogates to keep the children in line. As this colleague put it, "She spent all her time on trying to control the kids and none of it educating them." This is more than a metaphor for what too often happens in our classrooms, remote or in person.

The daily Serenity Prayer reminds me that my job is not to exert my power over children, but rather to seek to give my power away, to use it to empower them to assert control over their own lives and their own learning. That's what a play-based curriculum is all about. This is how children acquire the courage to change the things they can change, to stand up for their beliefs, to exert their own power in their own corner of the world. The adage is to "think globally, but act locally." Acting locally means tending to our relationships, communicating, and listening. This too is what play-based learning is all about. These are the important lessons to be learned when one is not under the control of others: it is the lesson of being us, which is the foundational place from which all great change must come. It will never come from generals or other leaders, but rather, to paraphrase Margaret Mead, from small groups of committed and caring people. This is what Tolstoy's general knew as well.

We seek control, we crave control, but it eludes us more often than not. This struggle to control the world can make us afraid, frustrated, depressed, and angry. Even within our own corners of the world, control is elusive, especially when we understand that we may not control others, no matter how young. But we can hope to control ourselves. We can, as the author and philosopher Voltaire concluded in his novella Candide, cultivate our own gardens in the company of the people who we know and who know us.

There will still be rocks and weeds to remove. There will still be difficulties and disagreements. But here is where change and control is finally possible.

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Early childhood educators, directors, homeschoolers, and parens of young children . . . please join me for this affirmative and informative live workshop. In the spirit of inclusiveness, I've kept the price as low as possible, so share far and wide. This is a great way to get the whole team on the same page for the New Year. Certificates are available. A replay will also be available. For more information and to register, click here: Making 2026 Our Year of Play

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

Especially the Truth and Beauty

I try to take some time each morning to sit outdoors as the sun rises. I tell people I do it because of the beauty. I assume they imagine I'm talking about the emerging colors of the sunrise. Indeed, for a long time that's what I thought as well. But I've come to realize that the true beauty of a morning outdoors as the sun rises is revealed not in seeing, but in listening.

The modern world is overwhelmed by human sounds. It's estimated that human-made sounds have doubled the background noise on 63 percent of the planet over the past couple centuries. There are very few accessible places where one can escape noise pollution. Even when we're able to "block out" the shush and rumble of traffic, jets, and trains, there remains those constant dings and rings, recorded music, the hum of furnaces, refrigerators, and florescent lights. And, of course, there's all the talking. "Sensory pollution," writes science journalist Ed Yong, "is the pollution of disconnection. It detaches us from the cosmos. It drowns out the stimuli that link animals to their surroundings and to each other."

When I sit outdoors and listen, once I've blocked out the human sounds, what I hear initially are the birds waking with the sunrise. There was a time when I'd turn my head in an effort to catch sight of this whistler or that warbler, but not so much any more. There is plenty of truth and beauty in those sounds alone. And on those occasions when I don't hear the birds, that lets me know that there is a hawk or owl or some other bird of prey nearby, listening along with me.

"Sounds," writes Marshall MacLuan, "are in a sense dynamic things, or at least are always indicators of dynamic things -- of movements, events, activities, for which man, when largely unprotected from the hazards of life in the bush or the veldt, must be ever on the alert." Listening to nature is a part of our evolutionary heritage that we are losing in our modern world.

There are rustlings in the shrubbery and my entire focus on what that might mean. It's probably just another bird, but it could be a lizard or squirrel or rodent. It could even be a raccoon or skunk. Or even . . . a larger animal. A coyote once dashed from my neighbor's hedge, carrying what looked like a rabbit in its teeth. Another time, a spied a bobcat watching me from a distance before slinking away, apparently spooked. It had made no detectable sound either coming or going, as quiet as the Great Horned Owl that passed over me one morning like a shadow. I imagine it's unusual for a bobcat, or any other animal for that matter, to witness a human sitting still and silent as the sun rises. We're more like the ravens -- noisy.

I suppose we modern, Western humans remain "ever on alert" even if it is for prey or predators. I mean that sound from my phone could mean that my baseball team has made some kind of announcement, or maybe a politician somewhere is wrong and the system is letting me, this an animal that is "ever on alert," know about it. The fact that the same ding notifies me of both a thumbs up to a text message as well as a death in the family is a narrowing of experience, one in which "seeing is believing" becomes our only greatest and only sensory truth.

It has taken me awhile to trust that hearing is believing as well. I find myself striving every morning to overcome my cultural training. Listening like this is makes me more aware of my other non-sight senses. I breathe more deeply. I think I'm starting to both smell and taste changes in the air around me. My body is always speaking to me, of course, but while listening, I'm starting to learn to hear the beauty and truth in my gut, joints, skin, and muscles. We are more than brains with eyes, after all.

We are bodies that have evolved with their own magnificent sensory umwelt, the word scientists use to when talking about the sensory experience of animals. Thought begins with sensory input. We evolved our a host of senses in order to survive and thrive, yet, it seems, we are increasingly, and perhaps dangerously, muting and deafening and blocking everything that isn't visual. It makes us stupider in that it leaves us unaware of so much. Especially the truth and beauty.

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Early childhood educators, directors, homeschoolers, and parens of young children . . . please join me for this affirmative and informative live workshop. In the spirit of inclusiveness, I've kept the price as low as possible, so share far and wide. This is a great way to get the whole team on the same page for the New Year. Certificates are available. A replay will also be available. For more information and to register, click here: Making 2026 Our Year of Play

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

And I Don't Owe Anyone an Explanation

For this project I cut irregular corrugated cardboard rectangles cut from boxes with which we were done playing, glue in cups, paint brushes, and squares cut from matte board scraps we got for free from a local framing shop.

Addison pointed out the squares weren't all exactly square. I eyeballed it while using the paper guillotine. I sometimes let the kids use the guillotine themselves, but when I do it's about the machine . . . and waiting a turn for the machine . . . being safe with the machine. There will be other days for that.

I'm trying to put myself in the children's shoes this morning as I review what they produced; trying to remember what it was like to move my body around with my child's brain; before I'd become addicted to accomplishment, doubt, praise, and debt.

When I cut up this cardboard box (above), which had once been packaging for an electric fan, I assumed that it would be the plain white side that would be used. But, Lily saw it differently, boldly choosing to arrange her matte board tiles against the backdrop of found commercial imagery. It looks to me like she let the patch of blue guide the placement of some of the tiles, as if they all belong in there, but are being blown away by the breeze from the fan that was once in the box.

Meyra made choices about color, tumbling gold squares together here . . .

. . . then burgundy ones in this piece. Of course, I'm sure she noticed, as she carefully picked these out, that these particular bits came from matte board with a fuzzy, felt-like finish. Maybe she felt each of them with her finger tips as she placed them.

Henry created a vignette, calling it his "Tire and Glue Store." Look how much effort went into arranging all those white tiles in a stack like that, first the larger ones, then the smaller, with one pink one on top. And over there, in the upper right corner, that black square with four smaller ones on top, each a different color; I think that's the tire store. He knew exactly what he was doing with this piece. That blue one up there, protruding slightly beyond the edge of his base; it means something, maybe it's the sky.

Charlotte chose a rather tattered, irregular base upon which to create this exercise in order. These aren't works in which children doused a surface with glue then scattered crumbs upon the sea. No, each piece in each of these artworks is intentional: a choice of color, size, positioning, and even orientation. You can see it here, many stacks arranged from larger to smaller, in rows. Her brain lived here as she made it, concentrating on each step it took to create. What did she think of that one small, small square all alone at the bottom?

Sylvia also clearly had something in mind, but again, there's that lone square floating up there above it all, like a signature or a fairy godmother or a small, square, pink life-giving sun.

Rex looks like he was on to something, but got called away.

Here's one I started. The green-black pattern across the bottom is mine. I then walked away, leaving it on the table. This is how I found it on the drying rack.

But even when the pattern isn't so obvious, the architectural aspects not so evident, each one of these works is the result of an elaborate, step-by-step thought process.

There's no other way to create these things than one piece at a time, intentional choices, trials, errors, failures, successes.

They tell stories or express emotions or simply track a path to mastery.

They are all evidence of a process involving corrugated cardboard, matte board squares, cups of glue, and paint brushes.

I remember being a child when I look at these. Everything, every little thing, is a matter for my brain, my fingers. Everything here is a decision, made for a purpose, made with a plan in mind. Nothing is random.

And I don't owe anyone an explanation . . . Although if you ask, I might be happy to give you one.

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Early childhood educators, directors, homeschoolers, and parens of young children . . . please join me for this affirmative and informative live workshop. In the spirit of inclusiveness, I've kept the price as low as possible, so share far and wide. This is a great way to get the whole team on the same page for the New Year. Certificates are available. A replay will also be available. For more information and to register, click here: Making 2026 Our Year of Play

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

"Strewing Our World With Rich Materials . . . Weaving Them Into Our Thoughts"

Section of world's largest dual-sided puzzle cube mosaic

I'm at an age where I'm the target for ads for products designed to keep my mind sharp. For instance, there are those "games" that purport to exercise the mind. The promise is that if played regularly, these games will help me maintain my quick wits, but the research I've seen suggests that they do little beyond improving one's ability to play those games. 

I can attest that this is true when it comes to crosswords. A couple years ago, I started tackling the New York Times puzzles every day. Up until recently, I'd never completed an entire Sunday puzzle without cheating. Now, with regular "training," I'm successful more often than not. But I wouldn't say that my mind is overall sharper now than it was when I was younger, just more experienced with a specific type of challenge.

This is how most testing works in school, of course. Doing well on tests is a skill one can improve with training. I've written before about how I was one of those rare birds who loved test day in school. In college, I once managed an 87 (a high B) on a biochem midterm for a class in which I wasn't even enrolled. It was a multiple choice exam and those can generally be played as process-of-elimination games. With essay tests, I played a more psychological game, doodling little outlines in the margins to convince the test-graders (usually overworked teaching assistants) that they were reading a well-organized work. If I sprinkled in the right buzz words, more often than not, my tests were returned to me with "Well organized" written across the top and an inflated score. And then there is the strategy of cramming: the practice of lodging trivia in short-term memory, then letting it go the moment the pencils are put down.

I figured out quite early that tests had little to do with demonstrating my learning and everything to do with my ability to play a test like a game.

I've never tested children. I've observed them. I've made educated guesses about what they might be thinking and then taken action that I hoped would support them in their endeavors to figure something or other out. Since it's impossible to ever know what's really going on the mind of another person, I have no idea if I've ever been correct in my guesses, but to my credit, I've mostly tried to not intrude to the point that I've derailed or detoured them from their own course. I mean, of course, I have done that in the clod-footed, ham-fisted way adults have when we're arrogantly certain, but at least I've trained myself to be conscious of this potential and, most of the time, stay out of their way.

I'm a fan of games and puzzles. I enjoy them and I take great satisfaction in the rare opportunity to actually see evidence that I'm improving. But I don't kid myself. Completing the Sunday crossword is evidence of nothing other than that I have practiced, that I have experience in, working crosswords. And so, ta-da, now I'm better at working crosswords than someone who never tackles them. Same goes for passing tests. 

In her book, The Extended Mind, science writer, Annie Murphy Paul writes, "We extend beyond our limits not by revving our brains like a machine or bulking them up like a muscle -- but by strewing our world with rich materials, and by weaving them into our thoughts." Those of us familiar with the Theory of Loose Parts will see that the cutting edge of neuroscience is just catching up with us.

As a preschool teacher, I've always said that my main goal is to provide a beautiful and varied environment, then get out of the way. 

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Early childhood educators, directors, homeschoolers, and parens of young children . . . please join me for this affirmative and informative live workshop. In the spirit of inclusiveness, I've kept the price as low as possible, so share far and wide. This is a great way to get the whole team on the same page for the New Year. Certificates are available. For more information and to register, click here: Making 2026 Our Year of Play

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

What We Found in Those Boxes

One day a large school supply order arrived.

I brought one of the boxes to our 4-5's circle time and put it at my feet. Naturally, the children wanted to know what was in the box. We looked for clues. We noticed the mailing label, so I read it aloud. It had been sent to the home of one of the parents in a different class named Jennifer, who lives in Seattle. Several of the children said they knew grown-ups named Jennifer and we took turns telling one another about the Jennifers we know. Many of them, however, lived in places other than Seattle. We then took the time to confirm that we all lived in Seattle, each child chiming in with the information, "I live in Seattle." Some seemed struck by the coincidence.

We read the return address label. It said "Discount School Supply." We ignored the word "discount," focusing instead on the words "school" and "supply." We were definitely a school, so maybe the box was for us after all. There was some back and forth about what "supply" referred to. Some of us thought it might be supplies like ropes and tools. The speculation became hyperbolic as we jokingly wondered if maybe they were astronaut supplies or camping supplies. A few kids rejected the hype, insisting instead that it was school supplies, "like paint and stuff." Others began to demand that we "just open the box."

There was then a brief discussion about how to go about doing that. When one of them mentioned a tool their family had at home called a "box cutter" I said I just happened to have a box cutter right there in a drawer behind me. I showed them how sharp it was and how the blade retracted into the handle for safety. I then cut the box open under the watchful eyes of a hushed crowd.

I had imagined the children surging forward as the box was opened, but they remained in place, backed off, I guess, by some of the wilder speculation that the box could be full of poison or a dangerous animal. As I pulled out items like bags of beads and bundles of pipe cleaners, the children cheered for each one, many excitedly informing the rest of us what they were going to make with this or that. We agreed that we were going to be able to use all of the stuff in the box.

The next day we got together, I brought the rest of the dozen or so boxes into the room. I said, "We need to unpack the rest of these boxes." When one of the kids suggested they would need the box cutter, I showed the sharp blade to them again. Some of them thought they could use it safely, but there were others who said they would rather that their classmates not be wielding sharp knives around them. "We'll just use our hands." And that's what they did, tearing into the boxes in groups of two and three, using their fingernails, teamwork, and ingenuity.

As they struggled with the boxes they talked and giggled. Some of them called out for help. Some leapt to their aid, while others remained focused on their own tasks. Some turned to one another for advice, "How did you get that open?" while others offered advice, "If you pinch the corner of the tape -- like this -- you can just peel it right off.

As each box revealed its contents there were shouts, "It's paint!" "It's paper!" "It's crayons!" each revelation a cause for celebration.

I'd told the children that I'd like the supplies to be "organized" on a bench.

When the last box was empty, there was several minutes of wild play as they put the boxes on their heads, tossed them in the air, and stepped in and out of them. Then as that died down, a calmer group took over, working together to build an airplane.

They then used some of the new markers to decorate it.

On the following day we took a few of the boxes outside and painted them with our new paint.

The day after that, we cut some of the boxes into smaller pieces to be used for glue gun constructions.

Before long, it had been a week and we were still discovering what was in those boxes.

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Early childhood educators, directors, homeschoolers, and parens of young children . . . please join me for this affirmative and informative live workshop. In the spirit of inclusiveness, I've kept the price as low as possible, so share far and wide. This is a great way to get the whole team on the same page for the New Year. Certificates are available. For more information and to register, click here: Making 2026 Our Year of Play

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

The Essence of Being a Play-Based Teacher is Not Teaching

I never pretend to know what kids will learn on any given day and, honestly, any teacher who does is either deluded or blowing smoke. No one can possibly know what another person is going to learn. You can hope. You can plan. You can lecture yourself blue. You can even, if you're especially clever, trick someone into learning something, but the idea that one person can "teach" something to another, except under narrow circumstances, is one of the great educational myths.

There is a quote that is most often attributed to the Buddha, but is more likely of Theosophical origins, that goes: "When the student is ready the master will appear." I like these kinds of quotes that persist because they are true even when they can't be traced back to the utterances of Buddha, Socrates, or Einstein. This one is even so true that there is a corollary: "When the master is ready the student will appear."

Some days I accidentally "teach" something to a kid. For instance, I once improperly used the term "centrifugal force" (when I actually should have use "centripetal force") while a child was experimenting with a hamster wheel and the kid, months later, was still misusing my term while performing his experiments, even as I repeatedly tried to correct him. But most days I teach nothing at all except, perhaps, what I convey to my students by role modeling. I've tried, believe me, to convey specific information to kids, like when I tell them that dirt is primarily made from volcanos, dead stuff, and worm poop, but most of the time the only things that stick are the things about which the kids are already asking questions.

And still, despite my utter lack of "teaching," the kids who come to our school are learning. How do I know? I watch them. I listen to them. I remember when they didn't know and then I hear them saying and see them doing things that demonstrate that now they do. And even though I'm not teaching them, they mostly learn exactly what I want them to know.

What do I want them to know?

The joy of playing with other people.

The frustration failure and the redemption of perseverance.

Emotions come and go and they are important.

I'm the boss of me and you're the boss of you.

Our agreements are sacred.

It's not only important to love, but also to say it.

It's not my job to "teach" these things. It is my job to love them and to do what I can to create an environment that is stimulating, beautiful, and safe enough: a place where children can ask and answer their own questions about the world and the people they find there. A place not of teaching, but of curiosity, exploration, experimentation, and discovery. We call it play and it's how we learn everything a preschooler needs to know.

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Early childhood educators, directors, homeschoolers, and parens of young children . . . please join me for this affirmative and informative live workshop. In the spirit of inclusiveness, I've kept the price as low as possible, so share far and wide. This is a great way to get the whole team on the same page for the New Year. Certificates are available. For more information and to register, click here: Making 2026 Our Year of Play

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!