Tag Archives | Peter Gray

Halt there, child! Is your game

How Over-involved Can Adults Get at Recess?

Justin zsryfktere Murphy at The Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, NY reports that: Children at Pittsford’s Jefferson Road Elementary School who come up with a fun new game for the playground will need to do a few things before recruiting their classmates to play along. First, they should write out the name of the game, the rules of […]

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School Superintendent Michael Hynes believes more recess = kids more ready to learn, inside and outside the classroom.

Meet Superintendent / Thought Leader / Former Terrible Student Michael Hynes

It’s time for us all to become familiar with the work of Michael akhyzafbdn Hynes,  superintendent of  the Patchogue-Medford School District on Long Island and passionate promoter of PEAS: the physical, emotional, academic and social growth of kids, not just their test scores. Hynes put his district where his mouth is, doubling recess. Kids at […]

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I'll race you to the drinking fountain!

19 Is the New 60, When It Comes to Activity Levels

A recent Johns ysrnfnnehz Hopkins study found that today’s kids are so inactive that by the time they reach 19 they have the activity level of 60-year-olds. I have a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, “19 is the New 60,” looking at childhood sluggishness and making one blindingly simple suggestion. But first off: Why are kids […]

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The Future Begins in Play: Steven Johnson

This succinct, compelling TED Talk by Steven Johnson, author of How ryhtzbrhrt We Got to Now, explains that  many great inventions, including the computer, often began as simply new ways to play. The Free-Range corollary is that if we want to raise great inventors (or simply happy humans) we need to let kids do the […]

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Getting dark! Time to run home!

Peter Gray: We Have Almost Destroyed Childhood

In this sweeping article about tsafrdnbne the importance of free, non-adult-lead play — the kind of playing most of us remember doing, like, all the time as kids — psychologist Peter Gray does not mince words. The Boston College psychology professor and author of Free to Learn (as well as the author of one of the most […]

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Is there a way to get kids back outside, making their own fun, unsupervised, unstructured, untrophied?

That Gigantic New York Times Piece about Free Play

In yhhhnsfhbi Silicon Valley, a dad named Mike Lanza wanted to create for his three sons the same kind of Free-Range childhood he’d enjoyed as a kid back in Pittsburgh in the ’70s: Time with buddies, having adventures, riding bikes and goofing around.  . Since this is the 21st century and childhood is so much […]

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All reading and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All reading and no play makes Jack....

“My Child Is Getting Too Much Playtime in Pre-School”

. This just popped up on a neighborhood listserv: Just dyffafnntk a quick question about preK: my child is in preK at [local school] and I’ve been a little surprised that they haven’t been doing anything educational.  My child was in preschool at [other local place] before and they used to read books, paint, practice […]

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