Urgent Text Line Launches to Support Parents and Teachers With School Closures

When Children Hit (Or Bite, Kick, Take, Scratch . . .)

To put it bluntly, we want them to feel badly about hurting or scaring or otherwise violating another person, but we don’t want it to be because they’ve made us angry or because we are going to punish them, but rather because they have caused pain to another person. In other words, we want them to learn empathy.

Play Dough: The Best Toy

Play dough is a vehicle for imaginative play.

The Hard, Messy, Emotional Work of Preschool

Most days aren't so hard, but there are moments in every day when things don't go the way we want or expect them to and then, on top of getting along with the other people, there are our own emotions with which we must deal.

“A Little Bit of Mommy”: A story of how one preschool student learned to overcome her separation anxiety

Feeding Preschoolers: Fuel for their bodies, minds, and souls

Breaking bread together is as old as humanity. It’s a time to tell our stories, to create connections, and to reaffirm the idea of who “we” are together.

Constructive Play: The Theory of Loose Parts

At its core, the theory of loose parts is a theory about democracy, about self-governance, and the rights and responsibilities of both individuals and groups to come together to shape their world according to their own vision

Full-Body, Full-Capacity Learning

Neuroscientists are now scientifically proving that we “think” with our fingers, our eyes, our ears, our noses, and our tongues, indeed every cell in our bodies.

Circle Time: Beyond Songs, Stories, and Game

Play-based education, in which children spend the bulk of their days coming together around their own projects, is the natural preparation for this aspect of the real world. It’s an opportunity for children to cooperate, collaborate, negotiate, and bicker, all of which is an ideal, hands-on preparation for the future. Circle time is an important part of that preparation.

Sensory Play 101

You can spend hundreds on a sensory table, but that’s an unnecessary expense for a small in-home provider. Inexpensive plastic tubs do the job just as well. As for what goes in the tubs, the possibilities are endless, keeping in mind that supervision is necessary, especially for children who are still prone to putting everything in their mouths.

The Nine Essential Art Supplies

The process of making art is a vital one: it is how we explore our world from the inside out, as opposed to outside in, the way scientists do.

Communicating With Parents About Difficult Topics

Preschools are often the first community a child knows beyond their own family. It’s here that they make their first friends, resolve their first conflicts, and come to understand that their individual needs must be balanced with the needs of others.

Seven Curriculum Essentials For New Preschool Teachers

So the WEEKDAYS team has guided you through the paperwork and you’re now in business. Now what? In the education world, we call it the curriculum, which in essence is the answer to the question: What are we going to do with our time together?

Why Families Need Small Neighborhood Schools

For people my age, our neighborhoods served that role, but today’s children are growing up in a world of daily commutes, scheduled playdates, and screen time instead of outdoor play with the neighborhood children. As a result, both children and their parents have grown alienated from the neighborhoods, their natural communities, something that shows up in our hunter-gatherer brains in the form of anxiety and depression, which are showing up in today’s children in epidemic levels.

Let's Pretend

Dramatic play allows children to explore their big emotions and the emotions of others in a safe setting