I have a historical question, which is, over time, how central a role has play assumed in early childhood education? Have there been times when it's been recognized as more critical and times before now when it has been diminished? Is there a pattern?

I think that early childhood, from its, and please our other colleagues who are listening and participating with us on this podcast, please do chime in if you have other things to add.

But I would say that early childhood from its inception has been an understanding that children learn through action, through engagement with materials, with relationships, and through movement.

And while educational philosophies throughout the decades and even the centuries have swung back and forth as a pendulum about how people learn, early childhood is consistently remained focused on the fact that children learn by doing, by engaging with materials and people and having a desire and a joy in that engagement.

And as I mentioned before, the last several decades of neuroscience research have just confirmed these theories and these understandings that people have developed from observations of children because the brain actually lights up more regions to make more neural connections and this has been confirmed through magnetic resonance imaging, that it lights up multiple regions of the brain when children are engaging in play.

It strengthens learning from every angle.

And in fact, when children are forced to not move, the brain has to work twice as hard because movement is is kids, people perform, especially children and especially boys, perform better cognitively when they're allowed to move.

educational organizations and movements.