“The very attributes we most want to nurture in our children—creativity, initiative, collaboration, problem-solving, courage—are best developed through imaginative play.”

The quote above—from the Alliance for Childhood’s report “Crisis in the Kindergarten” noted in my last post—is a succinct summary of one of the key expert findings explored in the nine significant research studies and numerous early childhood programs described in this report.

Over the past nine months, I’ve been doing some re-exploring of the importance of imagination and imaginative play and its possible positive impact in helping children to learn rules and self-regulation in classroom and playground settings. I was led to this exploration by hearing an NPR account of a program called “Tools of the Mind,” where preschoolers were rehearsing and planning their play. This reminded me of earlier experiences with the High/Scope Curriculum in the 1970s, both in preschool and elementary school, and some of my own and my colleagues’ early work in developmental education that led to the Responsive Classroom approach.

Tools of the Mind, I found out, is a fabulous and exciting preschool and kindergarten initiative that puts imaginative play at the center of children’s and teachers’ worlds and is showing remarkable results in the development of self-regulation, creativity, language, literacy, and general cognitive development. I read and am re-reading Elena Bodrova and Deborah J. Leong’s masterful text, Tools of the Mind, The Vygotskian Approach to Early Childhood Education (2nd Edition, Pearson, 2007).

Together with my current school colleagues, I have now twice visited classrooms currently using this approach and have been impressed. Clearly, teachers and schools adopting this approach are receiving exceptional professional development, and they voice confidence and enthusiasm for the results they are seeing in their children. There is also commitment and energy in these teacher teams to tackle a new, intensive program. Mostly, I was moved by the level of calm, purpose, and enjoyment in these classrooms. We are now actively exploring implementation of the program in our district.

Tools of the Mind is just one wonderful example of the content-rich, research-sound educational programs that have been emerging over the past ten years. These programs have been quietly swimming upstream against the tide of a high-stakes, basic skills, direct instruction, early acquisition trend in education, finally surfacing into the mainstream. May many more such programs surface and be widely shared.