New research tells us scientifically what most preschool teachers have always known intuitively. If we want to encourage learning, innovation and creativity we should love our young children, take care of them, talk to them, let them play and let them watch what we do as we go about our everyday lives.
We don’t have to make children learn, we just have to let them learn.
Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of the forthcoming “The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children,” from which this essay was adapted.
The new WECAN publication, "Singing and Speaking the Child into Life", comes from Susan Weber, Nancy Macalaster, and Jane Swain of Sophia’s Hearth. This compilation of verses, songs, and singing games is particularly intended for use with very young children under three.