Helping You Develop Your Own Unique Approach to Play-Based Learning

I started this blog in 2009 simply because I'd written a couple articles for Seattle's Child magazine that I thought were pretty good and felt they deserved a life beyond the recycling bin. That was the entirety of my ambition. This blog would provide an online home for these two articles. Period. They didn't have any readers beyond my friends and family, and that was fine because that's all I expected.

Before long, however, I began adding posts, inspired by the children as they spent their days playing at Woodland Park. It became a place where I told their stories, where I told my stories, and where I told our stories. As the only teacher in this school owned by the parents who enrolled their kids, I began to crave connection with other educators who felt as I did, who were learning from young children as they played. It took some hunting back then, but I finally found a handful other educators scattered around the globe that were, like me, celebrating play-based learning.

The cocktail of being a relatively new teacher, children at play, and these inspiring women, who to this day I think of as sisters, was a heady one. Our little informal collective began to inspire one another. We shared ideas and projects. We challenged one another. We one-upped one another. We had each felt alone in our play-based worlds, but now that we had found one another we began to realize that maybe we weren't crazy after all. In a world in which preschool was becoming increasingly academic and, frankly, hard-hearted, we were creating, in our own ways, and in our own corners of the globe, the opposite.

We were trusting children.

We were following children.

We were embracing this radical idea that, through play, through their self-selected activities, the children in our care were learning to be self-motived, to work well with others, to be critical thinkers, and, most of all, to love learning. 

Slowly at first, then suddenly, we all began to see our audiences grow. There were others like us! I guess I knew that something big was happening in 2013 when I was invited to speak in Athens Greece where a man who I now count as a dear friend, John Yiannoudis, had started his own urban preschool based, he told me, "on your philosophy." 

I have a philosophy?

When I met John face-to-face he confessed, "At first I thought, 'Who is this crazy guy in a red cape doing all these crazy things with kids?' But then I started reading your posts and realized that this is what I wanted for my own daughter."

John had organized an event at which I was the only speaker, scheduled for 6 pm on a Friday night, and the venue he had rented seated 400 people. Talk about crazy! When I saw all those empty seats on the day before the event I felt sorry for him. I imagined how disappointed he was going to be. There was no way, I thought, that more than a couple dozen people would turn out for this event featuring an English-speaking preschool teacher from a little cooperative school halfway around the world. 

When the day arrived, however, there were people sitting in the aisles. Maybe this idea of play-based learning wasn't so crazy after all.

Over the years, as I've continued to write, I've tried, each day, to share something true, something I've learned, or something about which I still have questions. And nearly every day someone tells me, echoing John, that they want "this" for the children in their lives -- play. Over the years I've received thousands of messages from educators and parents asking how to "do what you do."

This is the motivation behind my 6-week course, Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning, in which I share my "philosophy," one that places the pure joy of learning at the center. In this course, I provide the details, insights, and reasons behind my unique approach to child-led, play-based learning, with the idea of helping you to develop your own unique approach, one that honors the children and families in your life.

My career as an educator has been an accidental one in many ways. I was lucky to find my way to where I am. I'm grateful to my readers, my mentors, my blog sisters, and especially the families and children who continue to inspire me to look deeper, to think more radically, and, ultimately, play harder. You have helped me realize that I do have a philosophy, one that has emerged one blog post at a time, one question at a time, one epiphany at a time. I've been sharing it little by little for well over a decade now, scattered over 4000 posts, two books, and hundreds of talks. This new course is my attempt to pull it all together in one place, not so that you can do what I do, but rather so that you can do what's best for the children in your life, which is, as always, to let them play.

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Registration is now open for the Fall 2024 cohort for my 6-week course, Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning. It's for early childhood educators, parents of young children, grandparents, and caregivers who believe the radical idea that children deserve an authentic childhood centered around play and wonder. You will be both challenged and inspired as we launch into the new school year. Sign up your entire "team" (discounts available) to get everyone on the same page! Click here to learn more and register.

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 Radical Idea of Treating Children Like People

As we open enrollment for the Fall 2024 cohort of my 6-week course, Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning, I'm reminded once again how radical our ideas are about young children. I forget that not everyone trusts children even if most people say they do. I forget that most adults are convinced that children must be guided, coerced, tricked or otherwise manipulated to do "right" things, even as they genuinely profess a belief in their innate goodness. I forget that out there, outside our bubble, grown-ups might proudly say they want "kids to be kids," yet their behavior demonstrates that they can't imagine them thriving absent a background of near constant correction, "good jobs," and unsolicited advice. Most people think that we agree with one another about children, but once we get talking, they start to realize that what we're saying is radical.

It's the radical idea that children are fully formed people, due the rights and respect due to all the other people. When we treat adults as untrustworthy, when we seek to guide, coerce, trick or otherwise manipulate them, when we correct or offer false praise or unsolicited advice, we are generally considered to be jerks of the highest order. Yet somehow, many of us, maybe most of us, live in a world in which it's considered normal to treat children this way.

Do they need us when they're young? Of course they do, in the way that seeds need gardeners to make sure the soil is well-tended, that it is protected, and that it gets enough water, but the growing, the sprouting, the leafing, the budding, the blooming, and the fruiting is up to the plant.

I am spending more time these days outside of our bubble, interacting with adults who seem to genuinely want to do the right thing by children, to do better by children, but who are stuck with misguided ideas of what children are. They have no notion that, from an historical perspective, what they think is normal is not: for children to spend their days doing what the grown-ups tell them to do, to sit still, to spend all those hours indoors, to move from place to place driven by a schedule rather than curiosity. Recently, I was in a meeting with a pair of partners interested in investing in educational matters. Their own children had both been in cooperative preschools like the one in which I taught for nearly 20 years. One of them said, "On my first day working in the classroom I was down on my knees helping the kids build with blocks. Teacher Sandi tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'This is the children's project, not yours.' That was a real eye-opener for me."

I know Teacher Sandi. I know exactly how she said it. I've done it myself, often to highly accomplished professional people "slumming" for a day in the classroom. This kind of thing, as simple and as obvious as it sounds to those of us who have dedicated our lives to progressive play-based education, is for most people still a radical idea. Sometimes the thought of making the changes that need to happen seems overwhelming. It makes me want to crawl back into the bubble and stay there, focusing on the children of the parents who get it. But then I'm encouraged by how readily this radical idea can also become an "eye-opener," just as it was for me as I set out on the same journey more than two decades ago, and just as it continues to be.

Most of what I've learned from and about young children over the past two decades comes down to un-learning the modern lessons of parenting, schooling, and the capabilities of children. I've discovered that if I am to do right by children I must release control, shut up and listen, get out of their way, and love them. And whenever I'm challenged, whenever things are not going well, I've discovered that the answer always lies in returning to the radical idea of treating children like people.

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Treating children like people stands at the center of play-based learning. Please join this new cohort for Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning, a popular 6-week foundational course on my play-based pedagogy, designed for early childhood educators, childcare providers, parents and grandparents. I can't wait to share it with you! For more information and to register, click here

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!

Play-Based Learning is When Thought and Action Merge

A major focus of my 6-week course Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning (see below) is the role of the adults when the task of learning is turned over to the children . . . 

I was watching the girl arrange her things, or rather, the things she had made hers by gathering them from around the playground. It was clear from her behavior that she had a plan, but since these were loose parts, anything could be anything to an outside observer. Only the girl knew what that length of rope represented or that battered saucepan. I could have asked her, of course, swooping in as the adult in charge, but I didn't want to interrupt. She was clearly thinking something through and when someone is so immersed in an activity that thought and action are merged, it's a sin to interfere unless life and limb are at stake, especially if I call myself an educator.

Moments like this are common enough when we are children, but as we get older it becomes increasingly difficult for our thoughts and actions to merge in this way, even as we pine for it, because we know, in our hearts at least, that it's in these moments that we are most ourselves. This girl was at one with her purpose, pursuing a flow of thought-action, connecting experience, theory, and ideas to make something new: to create meaning from meaninglessness, order from chaos.

The psychologist and philosopher Abraham Maslow defined what this girl was doing as being creative and creativity is how we self-actualize, which is the pinnacle of his famous hierarchy of needs. As I watched the girl, I knew that for this moment, our preschool environment had satisfied all her lower level needs, which is why she was free to come alive in this way.

As an educator, however, I had an interest in what she was thinking. I hoped that when she reached a moment of triumph or epiphany, she would seek me out to tell me what she had made or discovered or felt. I hoped that another child would join her game and I could construct my own understanding through overhearing their conversation. But until then, I was left with observation and reflection.

In my recent conversation with Dr. Denisha Jones on Teacher Tom's Podcast, she said she doesn't even like the word "guide" or "facilitator" to describe the adult role in a play-based environment. Our job, she says, is "to be present, to observe, to step back. It's not child-centered, it's child-driven."

Eleanor Duckworth, teacher, psychologist, and translator of pioneering developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, wrote in her book The Having of Wonderful Ideas that the process of thinking and the process of learning are indistinguishable from one another. It's a concept that stands at the heart of much of my work as an educator: I see my role as creating environments, both for children and adults, that prompt thinking. Not agreement, although that might happen. Not memorization, although that might become a part of it. Not enjoyment, although that might emerge. I don't know what anyone will learn, but if I have evidence that they are thinking, like I did with this girl, it makes my heart sing. I know I've done well when a child looks up from their play and says, "I have an idea." I know I've done my job when someone says, "I've been thinking about something you said," or "I've been wondering about that post you wrote." But most of the time, I'm left to patiently wait for hints and clues. Both Dr. Jones and Duckworth feel that our primary role as educators is to be researchers and this is what I was doing.

The girl began to sing a song to herself as she played. It wasn't a song that I had taught her. It wasn't a song I recognized. It sounded like a lullaby, the kind that caretakers croon to a baby as it drifts off to sleep. It seemed to me that it was a song that evoked fond and soothing memories. The other day I came across a quote from the philosopher William James: "The art of remembering is the art of thinking." 

The author Doris Lessing wrote: "That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way."

Thinking, remembering, understanding, creating, learning. It was all happening right here in this moment of thought and action merged into a singular creative purpose. This is the way humans are meant to live. It's when our lives are full of meaning and emptied of doubt. We spend our lives trying to recapture these moments of merged thought and action from our childhood. It would be a sin to scuttle this girl's play just so I could tick boxes on an assessment form. What she was doing was nothing less that living, right now, on point and on purpose, self-driven. It's always my hope that if we can allow children to fill their childhoods with authentic moments like this, one after another, day after day, it will become a well from which they can draw when they feel lost, to drink of that substance they have understood all their lives, understand it in a new way, learn it, and to continue to live with meaning and purpose until the day they die.

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The science tells us that young children learn most of what they need to learn through play, through their self-selected activities, through asking and answering their own questions. Whether you are just starting out as a play-based educator, are a veteran of play, or are a parent/caregiver interested in providing children a playful childhood, please consider joining us. Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning is a 6-week foundational course on my popular play-based pedagogy, designed to make you think deeply about the role you play in the lives of children, and give you the inspiration, insight and tools needed to create an environment of genuine play for the children in your life. I can't wait to share it with you! For more information and to register, click here

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!

Some Facts About Play-Based Learning for Preschoolers

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Economic Forum, and Unicef (and according to the dubious measurement of standardized test scores) Finland has the best schools in the world. They have achieved this status by building their educational system on evidence. The US languishes around the middle of the pack, often falling into the bottom half according to some measures. We have achieved this lack of success by relying upon the busy-body guesswork of policy makers, billionaire dilettantes, and administrators who listen to them.

It shouldn't be surprising that the system based on evidence, on research, on reality, would outperform the one based on the fantasies and feelings of people who are not professional educators. In Finland, they do not try to teach kindergarteners to read because the evidence tells us that formal literacy instruction should not start until at least the age of seven and that children who are compelled into it too early often suffer emotionally and academically in the long run. In the US we are forcing kindergartners, and even preschoolers, to learn to read. There is very little research that points to longterm gains from teaching children to read in kindergarten. In fact, most of the research that has been done tends to find early instruction reduces comprehension and reading for pleasure in later years.

The evidence tells us that early childhood education should focus on equity, happiness, well-being and joy in learning. This is what Finland has done by basing their educational model on childhood play, which is, again according to the overwhelming preponderance of research, the gold standard. The US has based its early childhood education on standardized testing, increased "instructional time," bottoms-in-your-seats carrot-and-stick standardization, and an ever-narrowing focus on literacy and math despite the evidence that it causes longterm harm to children, because people in power who know nothing about education think that sounds good to them.

We are through the looking glass here. We are doing harm to our children. We are subjecting them to decades of "education" that is, again according to the evidence, doing them far more harm than good, while children in other countries are being provided the best education available because the adults are adult enough to look at reality and act accordingly.

This is the motivation behind my 6-week course, Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning, for educators, parents, grandparents and caregivers seeking to offer the children in their care an authentic, playful childhood (see below). 

This is not my feeling. This is not my opinion. This is not my philosophy. These are the facts as far as we can currently determine them. It is cruel, even abusive, to base our educational system on other people's feelings and fantasies, even if they are rich and powerful. For the sake of our children, we must demand play-based education because, damn it, that's what the evidence tells us.

(Please click the links in this post. Most of them take you to articles, research, and papers that provide even further links into the evidence.)

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The science tells us that young children learn most of what they need to learn through play, through their self-selected activities, through asking and answering their own questions. Whether you are just starting out as a play-based educator, are a veteran of play, or are a parent/caregiver interested in providing children a playful childhood, please consider joining us. Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning is a 6-week foundational course on my popular play-based pedagogy, designed to make you think deeply about the role you play in the lives of children, and give you the inspiration, insight and tools needed to create an environment of genuine play for the children in your life. I can't wait to share it with you! For more information and to register, click here

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!

Play-Based Learning Prepares Children for the Real World

A child fell and bumped her head hard enough that we decided to apply an ice pack. I fetched one of those single-use gel packs that one activates by squeezing it in the middle until the internal bag pops and the chemicals mix. I had left one of our parent-teachers at the scene with the crying child. Being first aid certified, I was going to take charge of matters, before remembering that this particular parent-teacher was, in her real life, an actual medical doctor, so I naturally deferred, handing her the ice pack. She wrestled with it for a couple minutes before handing it back to me sheepishly, saying, "The nurses usually do this."

I don't share this story to shame her, but rather to point out that doctors rely upon nurses. The knowledge and abilities of the two professions naturally overlap, but each is characterized by distinct set of complimentary expertise: together they heal, cure, and save lives. Of course, both doctors and nurses also rely upon a whole host of other people to get their jobs done, from educators and administrators to technicians, orderlies and custodians. No one does it alone.

Normal schooling tends to be about teaching everyone the same thing at the same time. Everyone is taught the same math, the same science, the same history, and then they are tested and graded on how well they've learned it. And under no circumstances should we peek over another person's shoulder. That's called cheating and is the worst thing you can do. 

This focus on individual silos of knowledge, however, disappears in the real world. The world beyond school is a place where solving problems relies upon collective knowledge, people coming together to contribute their unique expertise to make an enterprise work. When a new bridge is needed, we don't call together a team comprised only of engineers, people with the same skill set, to get the job done. No, we must also include contractors, geologists, and other suppliers of all sorts in order to actually get that bridge built, each contributing to the completion of the whole.

And the real world demands more than just knowledge. It requires the ability to work well with other people, cooperating, and sharing. Traditional schooling, with its focus on competition for grades and eyes-on-your-own-work, tend to discourage the development of these essential skills, focusing instead on the hoarding of knowledge like one might a commodity.

If the purpose of schools is to prepare children for the real world, it seems we're going about it all wrong.

I know virtually nothing about dinosaurs, but I don't need to because the children, among them, know everything they collectively need to know. When the subject comes up, and it comes up often in preschool classrooms, the children share what they know, building upon one another's knowledge, disagreeing, discussing. We use words like carnivores and herbivores, we know their Latin names, we discuss concepts like extinction and evolution, and eras like Jurassic and Cretaceous. Some of us embody dinosaurs, acting out their behaviors, moving our bodies, and using our voices to bring concepts to life. Others ask questions, encouraging us to probe deeper. Some merely listen, absorbing knowledge that they can then share with other children in other places, each of them bringing their own knowledge and abilities to the table to cobble together a perfectly age-appropriate curriculum, both more advanced and more relevant than anything taught in normal schools.

This is the way the real world works: this is how play-based education works. We come together around projects and ideas, working together for the benefit of everyone. What I know and what you know come together as what we know. And from there we create our world.

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It's hard sometimes to stay-the-course these days, but every child thrives in a self-directed environment because every child deserves the right to pursue their own special genius in the company of others who likewise are pursuing their special genius. It's not just a foundation for life, but a way of life. If you're interested in providing provide this kind of childhood for the children in your life, then you'll want to look into my popular 6-week course, Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning. It's designed for early childhood educators, childcare providers, parents, and grandparents who know that there is so much more than mere academics. To learn more and to register, click here.

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!

Living in a State of Alert Awareness

Psychologist and author of the book Changing Our Minds, Naomi Fisher, once told me that her three-year-old son took an early interest in numbers. One day as they walked together through their neighborhood, he noticed of the house addresses. "Did you know," he asked his mother, "that there are lonely numbers and friendly numbers?" He had, she said, "discovered odd and even numbers."

I doubt there is an educator on earth who would "teach" this mathematical concept in these terms. Indeed, most school curricula don't introduce the idea until first or second grade when children are twice Naomi's son's age, and even then it's typically done using the dry convention of numerals and ciphering, rather than the rich, relevant metaphor of lonely and friendly numbers on a street of houses.

As a preschool teacher, I've known hundreds of children who discover mathematical, scientific, literacy and other concepts well before they're "supposed" to. Parents have been taught by our educational system to treat this as a matter for pride in their obvious genius, to jump on it, to get them enrolled in advanced enrichment programs. The truth, however, is that sometimes their youthful proclivities foretell an abiding passion, as was the case with Dr. Fisher's son, but generally their epiphanies are indicators of nothing more than a typically curious child taking note of their world.

As a teacher in a cooperative school, my entire classroom career has been spent in the company of both children and their parents, and often even grandparents. I recall having a conversation with one of these grandparents who was visiting for a week. She wanted me to know that her grandson's obvious brilliance was the product of his mother's genes, who had, she assured me, been a genius child. She also let me know that she loved her daughter, but was disappointed that she had "wasted" her genius on such commonalities as stay-at-home motherhood. If she had anything to do with it, she was not going to allow the same thing happen to her grandson Max, which is why she was saving up to pay for expensive private schools. She also let me know, kindly but firmly, that she disapproved of our play-based curriculum. Perhaps it was good enough for the rest of these more common kids, but her grandson, she assured me with a wry nod, needed something more.

It was both sad and touching, mainly because I knew the mother (her daughter) and she was fully onboard with her son spending his childhood at play. In fact, she was considering avoiding school altogether, opting instead for a self-directed version of homeschooling called unschooling. "Max has already taught himself to read," she shrugged. "He's shown me that he's his own best teacher." 

Not every child is a literacy or mathematics prodigy, of course, but they all, if allowed to be their own teachers, are driven to discovery. I've rarely met a parent who was not, rightly, blown away by their preschooler's capacity to learn in this way. "Children who don't go to school," explains Dr. Fisher, "live in a state of alert awareness because they're not expecting to be told what to do and not expecting to be evaluated." It frees them up, she says, to look for patterns and make connections. A child who has not yet been taught the dubious lesson that they need adult instruction and approval for their learning instead comes to rely upon their own curiosity, which is what play-based, or self-directed, learning is all about.

In his book The Search After Truth, rationalist philosopher Nicholas Malebranche writes, "The mind does not pay equal attention to everything it perceives. For it applies itself infinitely more to those things that affect it, that modify it, and that penetrate it, than to those that are present to it but do not affect it." This is the idea behind not just self-directed learning, but learning in general up until the relatively recent advent of what we today call school. "Schools are the new bit," says Dr. Fisher. "Sadly, society thinks that self-directed learning has to end at seven."

Yes, Max had taught himself to read, but his driving interest during his grandmother's time with us was working with his buddies to construct devious traps. They would spend their days snickering and scheming, using scrapes of wood, fabric, old mesh produce bags, and whatever came to hand to create contraptions that they were certain would ensnare a classmate or two. His grandmother was appalled, whisper-begging me to guide them into more useful endeavors. Then one day, a trap made of rope was sprung on his grandmother, who found her ankles tied together as she tried to traverse the playground. As the boys cackled, I helped extricate his grandmother who was laughing along with them. I couldn't help remarking, "Pretty genius, huh?" 

It's hardly likely that Max will grow up to be a professional trap maker, but that's beside the point. The beauty of play-based learning is that it is always relevant to the learner and that is what's important if are goal is live a life of alert awareness.

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This concept of "alert awareness" stands at the center of why play-based learning, or self-directed learning, is the gold standard. Every child thrives in a self-directed environment because every child deserves the right to pursue their own special genius, especially in the early years. It's not just a foundation for life, but a way of life. If you're interested in providing provide this kind of childhood for the children in your life, then you'll want to look into my popular 6-week course, Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning. It's designed for early childhood educators, childcare providers, parents, and grandparents who know that there is so much more than mere academics. To learn more and to register, click here.

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!

How to be a Play-Based "Teacher"

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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This philosophy of "not teaching" is a key part of my approach to play-based learning, but it's not always an easy thing to do because it requires, for many of us, a significant mindset shift. It may seem counter-intuitive, but I've learned that children can only learn the most important things when I step back and let them learn. If sounds like something that would benefit the children in your care, you might want to join the Fall 2024 cohort for Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning, a 6-week foundational course on my popular play-based pedagogy, designed for early childhood educators, childcare providers, parents and grandparents. Registration will open now! To learn more and to register, click here.

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!