Play looks simple, but it is the engine of childhood learning. Here is how to protect it, fuel it, and feel good about doing ...

One of my earliest posts here concerned the definition of play, which I developed further in an article on “Definitions of Play” for Scholarpedia (Gray, 2013) and in my book Free to Learn. I first ...

Yes, daddy. I’ll be a good girl. It’s safe to say basically everyone has heard this before (and if you haven’t, hi), but do any of us actually know WHY we like it? Do any of y’all wonder what it is ...

Parents visiting their children’s kindergarten class for the first time may think they’ve arrived at the wrong room, especially if they expect it to resemble the kindergarten they attended as ...

Only six weeks had passed since the start of this school year, and I was already feeling exhausted. On a Friday during one of those long, exhausting days, two birds flew into my classroom. It was ...

Baseball has a way of sneaking magic into the margins. The game can sit still for hours, pitch after pitch, moving at a snail’s pace, until — in the blink of an eye — something extraordinary unfolds ...

It means more than you think. What does it truly mean to “play a video game?” That might seem like a basic question, and many might reply, “You turn the game on and use your controller or keyboard to ...