This is Why Our Schools are So Threatened By Children at Play

"I know!"

"I've got an idea!"

"Teacher Tom, look at this!"

The soundtrack of a play-based preschool is punctuated by expressions of these "eureka moments." Sometimes the children run up to me in groups, grab my arms to pull me over to what they have collectively discovered or invented or understood, babbling their explanations and theories explaining with their hands and bodies as well as their words.

There is a myth embedded deeply in Western schooling that tells us that learning happens according to some sort of hierarchical progression, but that simply doesn't jibe with what we know about how humans, especially young humans, learn. If we are to really understand anything, we are best served by first experiencing it first-hand in a relaxed, exploratory, wholistic way, not as a series of discrete parts like the way we tend, for instance, to teach mathematics (first comes counting, then adding, then subtracting, then multiplying, etc.). When we break things apart like this, we remove the complex connectivity that stands at the center of life itself. We would never think to teach children about, say, soccer by first showing them a photograph of a ball. We all know, intuitively, that this removes the ball from the world of physics, sport, teamwork, and play, rendering it meaningless. No, first we play with the ball, according to our current abilities, in context. Only once the child has internalized this thing called a ball and its relationship to the rest of the world, can we expect a child to be inspired by soccer. The fact that we try to teach young children math through arithmetic and ciphering is why so few of us grow up to be inspired by math; indeed, a huge percentage of adults today report some level of math anxiety. 

As the great educator Bev Bos recognized, "If it hasn't been in the hand and the body it can't be in the brain."

This misunderstanding of how humans learn, stands at the center of the Western approach going back at least to the ancient Greeks. It leads us to believe that inspiration has no place outside of the art studio.

As Aboriginal author and researcher Tyson Yunkaporta writes in his book Sand Talk: 

"Inspiration is something that has been relegated to the arts rather than the sciences, although stories of 'eureka moments' in scientific discovery are still celebrated . . . But creativity is now widely regarded as a vaguely defined skill set falling randomly on individual geniuses. Deep engagement encompassing mind, body, heart, and spirit has been replaced by a dogged ethic of commitment to labor and enthusiastic compliance with discipline imposed by authority. While it may be proven that internal motivation is more productive than external pressure, the uncertain and unsettling sources of this inner power are threatening to hierarchies, so intrinsic control methods of organization are generally ignored in both education and the workplace. Or they are co-opted into "self-management" protocols that involve internalizing our administrators and doing the job of monitoring or managing for them -- an arrangement not unlike the child who always has the voice of an abusive parent in his head."

The boy who crawls around the playground in imitation of a spider; the girl concocting potions in an old coffee can; the children negotiating the rules of the game they are inventing -- this is what deep engagement encompassing mind, body, heart, and spirit looks like. Those eureka moments of "I know!" "I've got an idea!" "Look at this!" is how it sounds. We've all experienced those moments and know that feeling of inspiration, of learning, that emerge from our play, whatever our age. This is what lets us know that we truly understand.

Yes, it is uncertain and often unsettling. It can't be measured or standardized. Play takes control away from the institution and returns it to the head, hands, and heart of the learners, where it belongs. And that is why our system of schooling is so threatened by children at play.

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Just two more sleeps . . . Let's make this year Our Year of Play! 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 ($9), 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!

A Strong, Natural, Healthy Need for Autonomy

I met this four-year-old boy because he had been forced to leave his previous preschool. Apparently, he had taken to hitting, biting, kicking, and otherwise abusing the adults around him. From what I'd been told, and I didn't quite buy it, he got along well with other kids, it was just the adults. Whatever the case, I would know the truth soon enough. As he glared at me from under his bangs, I knew we were starting out from a place of distrust.

I said, "Good morning" to him without any extra enthusiasm, then let him go about his business. My original plan might have been to spend the morning getting him on my bandwagon, but that was out the window with his very clear signals to back off, so plan B was to observe him from afar. And sure enough, he began making friends right away. His father had told me that he was a "big fan" of Legos, so I'd dumped our entire collection of plastic bricks into the sensory table and that's where he spent most of his morning, talking constantly about the cool things he was making. He positioned his body as far away from the adult as possible without leaving the table entirely.

I've known kids who were suspicious of me before, who found my personality a little too big, my voice a little too loud, my presence a little too overwhelming. I get that, but I'd never met a kid who kept his distance from all adults, his own parents, of course, excluded. His father had told me that he felt the problem in his previous school was that the teacher "kept getting in power struggles" and his son "always wins power struggles."

The boy had a spectacular morning, frankly. He was charming and engaged, eventually moving away from the Lego table, making a little art, checking out the cabinets in the home center, playing a round of a board game. He even sought me out at one point to show me the Batmobile he had created from Lego. The family, in consultation with an occupational therapist who had found nothing "diagnosable" in her time with the boy, had come to Woodland Park in the spirit of getting a new start.

It wasn't until we hit clean up time that his glare returned. "I'm not going to clean up!" he shouted at me when I passed where he sat, sulkily against a wall. "Fair enough," I answered, "Maybe you want to read a book or something." This is my standard response to a child who opts out and wants me to know about it.

Later as we gathered for circle time, he said, "I'm not coming to circle time." Again, I answered, "Fair enough," adding, "Sometimes kids like to spend circle time in the loft where it's quiet. If you change your mind, you can always join us."

I was employing a technique, whether I knew it or not, that founder of Transform Challenging Behavior, Inc. Barb O'Neill describes as "Yes, and . . .," a technique she borrowed from her experience performing improve comedy. Too often, important adults in the lives of children become so focused on controlling a child's behavior that, as Barb says, we forget that our primary role is to help children get their needs met. When we find a way to tell a child "Yes, and . . ." we are letting them know that we are on their side, that we are not "opposition," but rather an ally. What we say after the word "and" is a suggestion for an alternative to conflict.

That first day, the boy simply glared at us from his stance of opting out, although he did take my suggestion to look at books as the rest of us tidied and took refuge in the loft during circle time. And he made those choices the following day and the day after that, as the rest of us went about the business of our community, tidying up, singing songs, and talking about important things. 

On his fourth day with us, however, our circle time conversation turned to superheroes. One of the kids asserted, "I like Batman because he can fly to the clouds." I'd noted that the boy had been listening to us from afar and this was something he clearly couldn't let stand. "No he can't!" We all turned as he came down from the loft to tell us, "Batman doesn't fly. He swings on a rope and drives a Batmobile."

As the other children took up further debate, he slowly made his way across the room, drawn in by the manifest importance of this conversation. He had chosen to join us, a choice he continued to make from that time forward.

He never lost his knee-jerk opposition to adults who would presume to tell him what to do. It would come out whenever we forgot that his healthy need to think for himself must first be met. Of course, all children have this need, but in this boy it was particularly pronounced. It's an instinct that might frustrate future teachers who don't know that "challenging behaviors" are almost always best addressed by examining ourselves and our environment. As Barb says, the key is "transforming how we think, how we feel, and how we talk about children who exhibit challenging behavior." And more often than not, this starts with stepping back from our urge to command and control to take a long hard look at what needs are not being met.

This is often a difficult thing to do. Our culture tells us that it is in the job description of any adult who works with children to "control" them, to make them behave, to insist upon obedience, to walk them in single file lines, to make them do their fair share. This attitude is reinforced everywhere. As classroom teachers we are often, first and foremost, judged for our "classroom management" skills, which is really just fancy jargon for compelling obedience. Parents are often judged by how appropriately their children behave and when they misbehave it's the parents who have "lost control." In other words, we, as a society, expect young children to instantly and without objection set aside their own needs, always, and upon command, in favor of the needs expressed by the adult, be it for quiet, stillness, tidying up, or whatever. No wonder some children, like this boy, rebel. Indeed, I worry most about the children who simply go along with whatever they are told to do.

When we see our role as helping children get their needs met, rather than controlling them, much of what we label as "challenging behavior" is transformed. By not engaging in power struggles with this boy, I discovered that he had a strong need for autonomy, to make his own decisions, a healthy, natural thing. When I offered, "Yes, and . . . ," I let him know that he was heard and, even more importantly, trusted.

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Let's make this year Our Year of Play! 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 ($9), 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!

First We Must Admit We've Been Fooled

I stepped out into a windy morning. The sky overhead was swept clean of clouds, although they lurked around the fringes. But what caught my eye were the ravens. Dozens of them swirling in the wind that came, uncharacteristically, out of the south, wings spread, rarely flapping, but rather subtly changing shape to catch this or that gust. When the wind momentarily died, the ravens turned into it, moving into it like master sailors tacking against the wind. When the wind roared again, the ravens turned and abandoned themselves to it, tipping, flipping, and diving, embodied as acrobatic kites.

Behind them was the dome of blue. And then I noticed that it was peppered with ravens, soaring higher than I'd ever seen any bird before, hundreds of them, playing, there is no other rational explanation it.

Perhaps they were building brains, building muscles, making themselves more fit for survival, but like when humans play, really play, there is no reason other than joy. 

I want the children in my life to learn at full capacity, to soar to great heights, which is why I do whatever I can to set them free to play.

Mark Twain is thought to have said, "It's easier to fool people than to convince them they've been fooled." I think that's the position we are in with schooling. Despite ever-mounting evidence that the way we do schooling -- confined indoors, still and quiet, tested and graded, lectured and bored -- is perhaps the worst possible educational system anyone could devise. As I've written before, it's literally based on systems originally created to "break" animals to make them more docile and obedient. 

Things like joy, awe, curiosity, and wonder have no place in a system like this.

If our goal really is for our young to learn at full capacity, very few of our schools, beyond play-centric preschools, base what happens within them on the evidence of how humans learn. We've been fooled so long and so thoroughly that we simply can't admit it.

There are those who will read this and strenuously object. They will assert that their children experience joy every day, that they are learning at full capacity. I have no doubt that these educators are doing the best they can, but it's clear they've been fooled. If the kids were experiencing so much joy, then why do 75 percent of them say they have "negative feelings" about school (according to the lead researcher, "they are not energized or enthusiastic," key aspects of joy). If they are learning at full capacity, then why do so many children fail to earn top marks, fall through the cracks, and require remediation?

These ravens didn't need anyone's permission to play in the wind. When joy is at hand, it is their's to embrace. That is how life is meant to learn.

The plight of modern human children is that they need permission for everything they do, even play. In our schools, squeals of joy are stifled, leaps of joy are discouraged. Indeed, almost all expressions of joy, if not immediately curtailed through obedience, are grounds for punishment. 

Going outside to be in the wind, under the dome of blue, is limited to, at best, a few meager minutes of the day. The American Bar Association, the Association for the Prevention of Torture, and other organizations say that humane incarceration requires giving prisoners a minimum of one hour a day outdoors. Most of our schools don't allow even half that time to elementary school children. Some surveys show that the typical American child spends less than 10 minutes a day engaged in unstructured play outdoors, despite the fact that all the research finds that humans think more clearly while outdoors. Learning, not to mention mental health, demands time outdoors, yet our schools flat out ignore it.

It's a difficult thing to admit, that we've been doing it so wrong for so long. Tragic even, considering all the generations who have been subjected to it. It takes courage and humility to admit we've been fooled, courage and humility that many of us don't seem to have, even as we know in our hearts that it's true.

Can't we even, in the interest of education, give our children permission to play? It's joy that matters, not their damn test scores.

"(T)he imagination," writes George Orwell, "like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity."

The evidence tells us that we must set children free, like these ravens, to find joy in the wind, and it's only from this that learning at full capacity will take wing. 

But first we must admit we've been fooled.

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Let's make this year Our Year of Play! 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 ($9), 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!

Chaos Or Community?

And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. ~MLK

What I'm saying to you this morning is that Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated. ~MLK

And I say to you, I have also decided to stick to love. For I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn't popular to talk about it in some circles today. I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I'm talking about a strong, demanding love. ~MLK

On this Martin Luther King Day many of us will listen to snippets, perhaps all, of his great "I Have A Dream" speech, and we should, but civil rights was not the only cause this great American championed, and it is not the only reason we celebrate his life today. He was also a great advocate for ending the war in Vietnam and on August 16, 1967 he gave what many consider his finest speech on poverty in America at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta.

Usually entitled "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community?" this is long, powerful, and to this day controversial speech that reminds us that almost nothing has changed when it comes to poverty. Millions of our citizens of all races remain poor, but people of color bear the greatest burden. One in five black children lives in poverty. And while the powerful in our nation are engaged in a misguided, punitive approach to reforming our educational system, they are turning a blind eye to the core issue with education in America: poverty. Let this speech be a reminder that whatever we do in the classroom, until we address the "triple evils" of racism, poverty, and war, we will, as a nation, ultimately fail.

This is a magnificent, thoughtful and inspiring speech, one that taken in its entirety is guaranteed to make you think, make you sad, and may even make you angry. MLK calls here, for instance, for a "guaranteed national income." I know that's a non-starter for many people, but so was civil rights, so were at one time most of the great things humans have ever done. One reason we celebrate this man today is that so much of what he stood for has proven to be prophetic. If nothing else, we must think about what he has to teach us.

I urge you to find an hour today to listen and think, and even to dream, because when it comes right down to it, nothing will change until we have a dream.

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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!

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

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