One of the great things about living in Ontario is the government is currently doing its own big PUSH on the benefits of Play Based Learning with the new full day kindergarten programs ... there are lots of resources to help share with parents!

I got to hear Bill Tucker (Director of Education ) speak at a conference and teachers are even being retrained to not use THEMES that are planned out for the year but rather go with the 'emergent interests' of the group .... so hopefully this will eventually trickle down to parents soon as they see the value of learning coming out of the ELK programs who are using the proper 'new model' of curriculum.... and the better news is that the schools that ran the pilot programs for the 'play based learning' are seeing it bounce UP into grade one and two where teachers have less 'desk time' and more 'centres explorations' where kids can move around the room exploring at their own pace and learning styles and they are getting BETTER results with 'test scores' cause unfortunately we cannot get entirely away from that in the 'education system'!