Why Play Is the Most Important Way Children Learn

1.5 CPDs, Run Time 58:24

Humans have evolved to learn most effectively through play; play is the human education instinct made manifest.
-The importance of self-motivation v. external motivation
-The downside of expecting obedience from young children and how to instead promote cooperation
-How to speak with children so they can think (instead of just obey)
-How and why play-based learning prepares children to be engaged citizens
What exactly is play and how can we, as the import adults in the lives of young children, promote an authentic, playful childhood.

Tom Hobson is best known, however, for his namesake blog, "Teacher Tom's Blog," where he has posted daily for over a decade, chronicling the life and times of his little preschool in the rain soaked Pacific Northwest corner of the US. For nearly two decades Teacher Tom was the sole employee of the Woodland Park Cooperative School, a parent-owned and operated school, knit together by Teacher Tom's democratic, progressive play-based pedagogy. Teacher Tom came into teaching through the backdoor, so to speak, having enrolled his own child in a cooperative preschool, where he began working daily in his daughter's classroom as an assistant teacher under the tutelage of veteran educators although he'll be the first to tell you that most of what he learned came from the children themselves. When it was time for his daughter to move on, he "stayed behind.”