School recess improves behavior – from the NYTimes. Anyone surprised?
Tag: play
Outdoors at Lunchtime
Click the pic for a better view.
Slow Food, Slow School: John Cleese and the Promise of the Tortoise Brain
There’s a slow food movement so why not a slow mind movement? Some years ago Guy Claxton wrote Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less. It made a compelling argument that the mind works best when we trust the unconscious – our “undermind” tortoise mind. The hare brain is the deliberative, logical, conscious thinking we all…
We Are Under Construction But There’s Still Plenty of Room for Recess
With the main playground currently out of bounds due to construction those swings are still, the tire swing empty, the playhouse deserted and the slide unslid. But all is not lost. There is still recess – a time to go outside, be with friends, meet new people, run around, hula-hoop, play ball, climb mountains, learn to fly, invent new games,…
Nature Deficit Disorder
One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can. William Wordsworth makes this assertion in his 1798 poem “The Tables Turned”. In the poem he is continuing a dialogue with a fictional friend who has urged him to study more, read more and spend less time…
The Joy of Learning and the Expensive English Toy
The Indian National Curriculum Framework opens with this most telling childhood anecdote from the poet Rabindranath Tagore: When I was a child I had the freedom to make my own toys out of trifles and create my own games from imagination…One day in this paradise of our childhood, entered a temptation from the market world of the adult. A toy…