Online Preschool: Panacea for Inequality or Placebo for Guilt?
Hot Topic: Is Preschool the Place for Play or for Academics?
There’s a long, worn-out battle over whether preschool should be play-based or academics-based. The argument goes round and round with one side accusing the other of ignoring proper child development, or failing to prepare children for the future, or selling cute little puppies to make fashionable fur coats.
Learning Through Play: The Spring Bundle is Here!
**This offer has ended, but the individual resources can still be purchased from their original locations. Click on titles below to be redirected to purchasing information.**
Play. Grow. Learn. An Interview with Christie Burnett
Christie Burnett is an accomplished Aussie blogger who specializes in early education and child development. Sometime between running her exceptional blog, Childhood 101, and writing a fantastic ebook, she’s also just produced the first issue of a wonderful e-zine, Play. Grow. Learn. Read on to get to know more about Christie and this new resource for parents and educators. (I only wish you could hear her delightful Aussie accent as well. Go ahead and add your own if you like.) [Read more…]
Play vs Academics: A False Dichotomy
An argument is brewing in the preschool scene. In one corner, you have those arguing for more academics to give children that head start that might correct the troubles of high-school drop-outs and low test scores. They claim that children rise to the occasion and show that they are capable of more than we’ve been asking.
In the other corner, you’ll find those who say play is disappearing from the cultural landscape of America and that its absence is a contributor to many childhood maladies such as obesity, ADHD, and declining social skills. They say that children “rising to the occasion” are really only performing splinter skills , which are more closely aligned with party tricks than with actual learning.
