Aug 28 | Listening to the Learners

Today (and last night) when I tried to give directions for how to use the materials the 3yr old and the 4yr old both said “Mom! No, we’re NOT doing that right now!” They were trying to say “we just want to play, don’t boss us”. So, I left them alone, turned to the husband, talked about something, turned back and both kids were doing a thing that’s totally in the booklet- arranging the bears by color- but in totally different ways.

They were loving it. They were “just playing”. And I loved it, too. Because contemporary brain research shows that the capacity for “just playing”- especially open ended playing for long periods of time- is a key indicator of long term academic and social success. So the adults learned lesson #1 from the kids today: sometimes you need to ditch the manual.