Playing or Learning?

A new paper in the journal Pediatrics summarizes the evidence for letting kids let loose. “Play is not frivolous,” the paper insists, twice. “It is brain building.” The authors — Michael Yogman, Andrew Garner, Jeffrey Hutchinson, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff — ask pediatricians to take an active role by writing a “prescription for play” for their young patients in the first two years of life.

“Play is disappearing,” says Hirsh-Pasek, a developmental psychologist who is a professor at Temple University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. By targeting doctors, she explains, the paper hopes to build on the success of a literacy initiative called Reach Out and Read. That program reaches nearly 5 million children annually by giving out children’s books at doctor visits. “You have an opportunity there” to change the behavior of a child, she says.

Play or learning? What about both . . . Sequoia’s Treehouse!

We don’t need a new study to tell us what we witness every single day, but it’s nice to have the support of trusted professionals.

Sequoia’s Treehouse, where early childhood education is actually fun.