In a recent article entitled, Playing to Learn, psychologist Susan Engel outlines an entirely different kind of elementary school curriculum. According to her model, rather than continuing to have our children memorize facts and formulas, they would be served much better by developing ways of “thinking and learning that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on.”

As we all know, any broad-based change in our country’s educational system will be slow in coming. After all, just improving our school lunch program has been years in the making and still has far to go. What is so encouraging about Ms. Engel’s approach is that, as a parent, you can immediately see ways that you can implement some of this change at home while waiting for our schools to catch on. Instead of trying to boost our children’s academic performance by drilling them on their multiplication tables or torturing them with spelling flashcards, we could instead spend time having a talk about something we have seen in the news. We can talk about certain scientific principles involved in certain recipes while cooking or even stop and make some simple observations about our surrounding when out taking a walk.

This article was a real WOW! for me as a mom who is always trying to somehow supplement what my kids are learning at school. I can suddenly see how I may be focusing my attention in all the wrong directions. Take a look and see what you think…