Too Much Too Soon

Tonight, I was honored to see Janet Lansbury, Tom Shea, and Teacher Tom speak in collaboration with Play Iceland. A common thread through them all was, as Magda Gerber said, "Be careful what you teach. It might interfere with their learning." Play-based education is vital for kids, which I am learning through my own kids as I try to both parent and teach them. Play Iceland believes, however, that formal education should occur only after a child has a good sense of who they are. This happens around age 7. 

As I try and fail and try and succeed a little and try and fail over and over with different approaches to homeschooling our very intense oldest child, I forget that there is yet another option that works most of the time: play. Play is something that's intrinsically and freely chosen. Play is an action and not an event. We live in an age of "OMG! My child is falling behind!" And we forget that in play children both ask and answer their own questions about the world. Play is not unnecessary. We forget that play is what children do when no one is telling them what to do and, if we allow ourselves to observe carefully, it is through this play that children prepare for the future that they see for themselves. 

In play-based education, we prize failure; in formal education, failure breeds timidity. Success means nothing; the process of getting there means everything. As educators, it is our job to create an environment where children can figure things out themselves. It took Thomas Edison 1,000 trials to create the incandescent lightbulb. When asked how he felt about failing 1,000 times, he said that he didn't fail 1,000 times but, rather, creating a lightbulb has 1,000 steps. 

So I sit here trying to find new ways to teach our 2E SPD boy night after night when what I really should be doing is getting more sleep and investing in a closet full of family rain gear.