Nicole

Play, along with its alter ego, storytelling and acting, [is] the universal learning medium. Children, at all ages, expect fantasy to generate – indeed they cannot stop it from doing so – an ongoing dialogue to which they bring a broad range of intellectual and emotional knowledge at a very early age. -Vivian Gussin Paley, […]

{speaking of a child struggling in her class} [he] is not a slow learner. He is a cautious researcher. He takes each new idea and collects data on its application until he is satisfied that he knows every response and reaction it might receive in the outside world. He expects mistakes and wants them to […]

We cannot have real learning in school if we think it is our duty and our right to tell children what they must learn.  We cannot know, at any moment, what particular bit of knowledge or understanding a child needs most, will strengthen and best fit his model of reality. Only he can do this. […]

…in no other arena do we take for granted so asymmetrical a relationship as that between parent and child. -Alfie Kohn, from Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes

The constructive way to handle anger is to limit our expression of it, and when we calm down, to use it diagnostically: what is so wrong in our life that we feel furious, and what do we need to do to change the situation? -Dr. Laura Markham, from Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop […]

Your child will delight and exasperate you, thrill and annoy you. By accident, really, your child will ask you to grow, too. If you can notice when you’re triggered and restore yourself to equilibrium before you take action, if you can soothe your own anxiety, if you can reflect on your own experience and make […]

The practice of rewarding people conveniently spares us from asking hard questions about why we are asking people to do things that are devoid of interest in the first place. -Alfie Kohn, from Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes

Since we can’t know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned. -John Holt, from […]

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. -Henry David Thoreau

Anyone can memorize facts and figures. The real way to learn anything is to go out and experience it. Let your curiosity lead you. -The Man in the Yellow Hat, from Curious George the Movie