Parent Education



We invite you to read the articles below and to check back for our schedule of guest speakers.

NPR

"Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills"

It’s interesting to me that when we talk about play today, the first thing that comes to mind are toys. Whereas when I would think of play in the 19th century, I would think of activity rather than an object.
— Professor HOWARD CHUDACOFF

The Washington Post

"The importance of childhood friendships, and how to nurture them"

Friendship is often underrated, considering the tremendous impact it has on our well being. Early-childhood friendship is something that is frequently overlooked as a positive developmental influence. We don’t always realize how attached young children are to their friends.
— Lena Aburdene Derhally

The New York Times

"The Building Blocks of a Good Pre-K"

WITH the introduction of universal pre-K in New York City, we have created a new entry point into our public school system. This raises a key question: What do we want our children’s first experiences in school to be? What does a good education look like for 4-year-olds?
— Shael Polakow-Suranksy and Nancy Nager

New York Magazine

"Why Typical Preschool Crafts Are a Total Waste of Time"

One morning in March, early-childhood educator Erika Christakis was in a meeting with a woman in Windsor, Vermont, when she felt a pair of eyes on her. Wide, vacant eyes crafted from paper, to be more specific. They belonged to a construction paper groundhog made by the woman’s 2-year-old, and something about their bug-eyed stare caught Christakis’s attention. “It was a cartoonish, adult version of an animal,” she writes in her new book, The Importance of Being Little, “not something a toddler could have conceived or executed.” And, anyway, she wondered, what could the celebration of Groundhog Day even mean to a toddler?
— Melissa Dahl