If allowed to help, toddlers become great work partners later in childhood. By Peter Gray Ph.D. Freedom to Learn Little toddler helping in kitchen with washing dishes We, in the United States and many other Western nations, more often think of children as sources of extra work than as sources […]
Encouraging children to make and use a range of maps helps develop their spatial skills, great if they want to read an x-ray, design a building or put up flat-pack furniture later in life. jeshoots.com/Unsplash When we read maps, pack the car for holidays, assemble flat-pack furniture or cut cake […]
Failure is a gift disguised as a bad experience. from www.shutterstock.com In recent years, there has been a concerted effort to protect children from failure in order to safeguard their fragile self-esteem. This seems logical – failure is unpleasant. It tends to make you look bad, you have negative feelings of disappointment […]
By Peter Gray Ph.D. Freedom to Learn Monitoring, structuring, and protecting reduce children’s activity and health. Most of my writing about children’s free play has been about the mental health benefits (e.g. here), but in this essay I’m concerned with the physical health benefits. Children are designed, by nature, to play often in physically vigorous ways. That […]
By the time children are five, they should show preference for a particular hand and be able to work with others. from www.shutterstock.com Parents often have different expectations for their three- to five-year-old children when they attend an early learning centre. Some parents expect their child to engage in academic […]
Encourage children to think about where they are in space: if they’re looking at a map of the zoo, ask them where they are in relation to the kangaroos or lions. Shutterstock Educators and researchers agree early literacy experiences are important for children’s cognitive and language development. For the past […]
By Peter Gray Ph.D.Freedom to Learn Media descriptions of POTUS exemplify a toxic societal anti-child prejudice. Every day, it seems, we read of or hear journalists and politicians (of both major parties), and just plain people, referring to Donald Trump as “childish.” Here are a few of the many media headlines on this […]
By Peter Gray Ph.D. “Follow your passions,” they say. But what do passions arise from? At almost every commencement address, the speaker urges the new graduates to follow their passions. It seems almost cruel. The schools at which I’ve heard these speeches seem to be deliberately designed to prevent the development of passionate […]
four years boy playing with colorful wooden blocks With Christmas looming, many people will be considering what present to buy for their children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren and friends. Soon, if not already, we will be reading lists of the top trending presents for 2017. These lists will no doubt […]
Not all young children want – or are able – to sleep at the same time. Shutterstock The legislated regulatory standards for sleep, rest and relaxation in early childhood education and care have changed this week. What are the changes and why have these been made? From October 1, the National Quality Framework […]