Kaleidoscope Learning

Every day, I strive to make sure we have some way for kids to build stuff. Usually that means some sort of blocks. I also want there to be a sensory exploration going on, an art project, a couple fine motor activities, something over which to puzzle, and at least a few conversation starters. I try to make sure there’s a place to learn with one’s whole body, a way to get messy, and plenty of prompts for sentences that begin with the words, “Let’s play a story…”

I strive each day to set up an environment offering opportunity, challenge, and questions, one that is both a continuation of the day before, while also offering plenty that is new. 

From Teacher Tom tuesday, April 17, 2012

Conversations with friends, after I have taken my workshops often go along the lines of ‘If children are allowed to explore on their own, how do you teach them?’ Another  common question is ‘what is the learning intention behind your outdoor workshops?’and  ‘what do you tell your children that they should be learning from your workshops?’

The only response I can give is that the children learn for themselves. I am there to help them discover. I cannot tell them what they should be learning. Indeed a lot of the time I do not know myself as my sessions are geared to exploration in itself. An explorer sets out to discover something new, not with an end goal of what it is that they are going to find. That is how I look at my teaching.

Posted March 29, 2012 by The Natural Playground 

By Joan Almon and Edward Miller

The crisis in early education in the U.S. continues unabated. Policymakers persist in ignoring the huge discrepancy between what we know about how young children learn and what we actually do in preschools and kindergartens.

Numerous studies—some extending over decades—show the effectiveness of play-based education that combines hands-on learning with child-initiated play. But that research is largely ignored. Instead, short-term studies that show gains in discrete skills like letter and number recognition are increasingly used to justify didactic and even scripted instruction for young children—with disastrous effects for many of them.