By Let Grow

Read Time: 6 minutes

Learning Without Lessons: How Kids Figure Things Out on Their Own

For most of human history children learned WITHOUT lessons, says anthropologist David Lancy. They watched, imitated, and played their way into competent, confident adulthood. They need the freedom to do...
By Let Grow

Read Time: 2 minutes

When Students Stop Sticking Their Feet Out

The President of Let Grow's piece in this week's issue of THE Journal, a magazine for educators, looks at how to make kids less passive and worried: BY LENORE SKENAZY...
By Let Grow

Read Time: 4 minutes

A Surprising New Way to Fight Bullying

To fight bullying successfully, you first have to understand where it's coming from, writes Kevin Stinehart in eSchoolNews. Stinehart is a 4th grade teacher at a Title 1 (high poverty)...
By Let Grow

Read Time: 6 minutes

A Business Fair…for Kids?

There are about 100 Acton Children's Business Fairs a year By David Kirby Traditional approaches to teaching entrepreneurship too often become a boring exercise in classroom abstraction. Compare this to...
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 5 minutes

When Yellowstone Reduced its Wolves, Eco-Disaster Ensued. And When America Started Reducing Play Time…

"The analogy is obvious," says Playworks' founder Jill Vialet. Embarrassingly, when I first heard about Playworks a decade ago, I rolled my eyes. An organization that sends recess coaches to...
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 5 minutes

The Startling Things That Happened When a Youth Sports Program Replaced Some Drill Time with Free Play

A radical experiment that could have backfired, didn't! Kids with more time for unstructured play and less for drills at sports practice ended up better players all around.
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 3 minutes

Deep, Meaningful Play Takes Self-Control…on the Part of the Adults

Like an animal behaviorist studying bonobos in the wild, Peter Gray found himself in the playroom at his church after services were over. Gray is a co-founder of Let Grow...
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 2 minutes

A High School Student Blossoms: “I have been a lot happier than when anxiety was hovering over my head”

20 "doses" of independence made him ready to take on the world.
By Let Grow

Read Time: 3 minutes

Updated & Expanded Second Edition of “Free-Range Kids” to be Published Tomorrow! Provides All-New Insights for Parents and Educators

Author and Let Grow President Lenore Skenazy expands on her classic, and reflects on the impact of the movement over the past decade The updated and expanded second edition of...
By Jodi Maurici

Read Time: 8 minutes

Straightforward Tips from a 7th Grade Teacher Who Has Watched Her Students Growing Passive & Anxious These Past Few Years

"Students don't even open the classroom door when someone knocks. They look around for someone else to do it." As a seventh grade teacher for over 25 years, I have...
By Let Grow

Read Time: 2 minutes

Play in the Time of COVID

Watch the video, below. Happy kids, free play and clean COVID score-card. It's all happening in South Carolina, thanks to 4th grade teacher Kevin Stinehart. Kevin had started a Let...
By Lenore Skenazy

Read Time: 3 minutes

When P.E. Teacher Let His Students Organize their Own Games Outside, He Was Blown Away

They learned to move and try new challenges, but that was just the beginning. Today's 19-year-olds are as sedentary as adults age 60. That was the startling discovery of Vadim...