Little Kids, Big Hearts & Minds

Using Their Words features social justice projects from elementary school classrooms. Hurrah!

Play!

A new study from the Alliance for Childhood: Crisis in Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School.

New research shows that many kindergartens spend 2 to 3 hours per day instructing and testing children in literacy and math—with only 30 minutes per day or less for play. In some kindergartens there is no playtime at all. The same didactic, test-driven approach is entering preschools. But these methods, which are not well grounded in research, are not yielding long-term gains. Meanwhile, behavioral problems and preschool expulsion, especially for boys, are soaring.

View the 8-page summary.

It's a great resource for drama educators!

Other books on play that I recommend:

• Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art by Stephen Nachmanovitch
• Deep Play by Diane Ackerman
• Dorothy Heathcote: Drama as a Learning Medium by Betty Jane Wagner

Looking for meaningful children's books?

The Jane Addams Childrens Book Awards are given annually by the Jane Addams Peace Association to children's books that promote peace and social justice. It's an excellent list of books. I know I often have trouble finding children's literature with a social justice foundation.

One book that caught my eye:

Poems to Dream Together=Poemas Para Soñar Juntos, written by Francisco X. Alarcón, illustrated by Paula Barragán, and published by Lee and Low Books, Inc., has been named an honor book in the Books for Younger Children category. In nineteen short and heartfelt poems in Spanish and English, Alarcón encourages and inspires us to dream alone and to work and dream together, as families and communities, in order to make our hopes for a better world come true. The stylized paintings of Paula Barragán colorfully extend and interpret the theme.