Why Preschool Shouldn’t Be Like School

Without a teacher present, children look for a much wider range of information and consider a greater range of options. Knowing what to expect from a teacher is a really good thing, of course: It lets you get the right answers more quickly than you would otherwise. Indeed, these studies show that 4-year-olds understand how teaching works and can learn from teachers. But there is an intrinsic trade-off between that kind of learning and the more wide-ranging learning that is so natural for young children. ..

Social-behavioral readiness in kindergarteners impacts long-term success — ScienceDaily

“These results are important,” says Gross, professor and the Leonard and Helen Stulman Endowed Chair in Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing. “They show how critical social and behavioral skills are for learning, how early the struggle begins for young children, and how important it is to address the problem of social-behavioral readiness well before children enter kindergarten.”

Body Centered Listening, part 2

Whole body listening doesn’t have to involve your ears at all. It can take place completely inside your body. It is all about identifying how things feel to you, and then making a decision based on whether something feels “good,” or “not so good.”

Heart Centered Listening vs Body Centered Listening.

If your child (or someone else) screaming “I want to stay!!!!!” Makes you want to scram and extinguish that screeching…

Raising Entitled Children

Several of the schools Kian attended over the last 5 years gave us both the feeling that he was being programmed to “fit in.” The implication there is that something about his authentic self was somehow in need of repair or renovation. Attention to “fitting in” can make a person learn the “eggshell walk” at an early age.

What do Birds Know that We Don’t?

Just yesterday I just had a wake-up call about my relationship with my 4 year old son. It began as I held another child for 40 minutes while he cried for no reason apparent to me, or to any of the other teachers. There was nothing obvious to “fix,” so I did what I could: I simply held him and allowed him to cry. I didn’t try to jiggle him out of it. I didn’t try to joke with him, or cheer him up, or even reassure him about some fears I could imagine he might be having. I had absolutely no idea why he was crying, so I just let him cry. While he was crying, I periodically checked in with him: “Would you like to call your Mom?”

Compassionate Listening = Listening to Ourselves with Compassion

The reason why I created a non violent preschool for my son, and the reason why I am on the hunt for a humanitarian school (or at the very least a compassionate teacher) for his elementary school experience, is completely selfish: I was a troubled child. I was the hard one. I had BIG emotions, and they were usually not understood. (OK, I admit it…I am STILL the troubled child, and I STILL have BIG emotions!)

If We Don’t Let Our Children Play, Who Will Be the Next Steve Jobs?

The forecast doesn’t look good. In an era of parental paranoia, lawsuit mania and testing frenzy, we are failing to inspire our children’s curiosity, creativity, and imagination. We are denying them opportunities to tinker, discover, and explore — in short, to play.

Kindergarten Testing and the Shocking Results…

New Kindergarten Readiness Test … if kindergarten is the new first grade, then when do our kids attend preschool? Is the logical extension that we begin teaching our children social skills in utero?

PlaySchool for Big Kids?

Whoo-wee! PlaySchool for older kids! What will THAT look like?

Hiking, Collaborating on BIG plans, building, creating, exploring…….being free (like a kid should be….) (do you remmember those days? Wish you had them back? Why not provide that for Your child?)

Kindergarten through 2nd grade welcome!

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