Saturday Reads: Learning through play

Janet Lansbury has an excellent post up about how babies learn through play. Don’t we all learn through play? I wish we had more play time and less homework (or that homework was abolished altogether). By the way, you do know that studies prove that homework has no value while its negative effects are pretty well known, right?

She also poses six ways to help our kids get to know and love themselves. This is good stuff, folks. I feel so lucky to live in an age where we can access things like this. As much fear as I carry as a parent, I cannot imagine how much fear our own parents had—or that unschoolers had surrounded by communities who thought they were weird without any Internet! Can you imagine? We are so lucky. Gotta take those tech breaks too, of course, but this fellowship and the ability to learn from one another is amazing. Just thought I’d share that.

Dr. Laura asks if you could dare to not discipline. Good question—could you?

What happens when you remove free will from education? John Taylor Gatto knows. And by the way, there’s no one right way to learn.

Unschoolery has a great post up about why you don’t need to worry about what your child is or isn’t learning—or compare your child’s learning to any other child’s. He presents an alternative list of things to make sure your child is learning, such as how to be okay with discomfort, or how to pursue something he’s interested in. I’m putting this one on my bulletin board.

I’ve been subscribing to Elephant Journal for a couple of weeks now and I’m really enjoying the content. Check out this post about 10 things we should practice daily. I’m not into “shoulds” but I think it’s worth considering.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia