Nurturing Brilliance: Using Play-Activated Learning to Awaken Children’s Potential

Nurture children’s innate brilliance through play with acclaimed educator Sally Haughey.

Sally has distilled decades of research and experience to create the Play-Activated Learning model for understanding children’s play and learning. The Play-Activated Learning model gives educators and families an understanding of a child’s behavior in the classroom during free play, including the growth unfolding in the brain. It also offers a view of the role of the educator in supporting the child’s learning and development. The model explains the incredible unfolding and blossoming that happens during play and provides a science-based approach to communicating that growth and development to parents. It builds on a foundation rooted in your view of the child and progresses through four stages:

1. Permission, allowed by the educator’s preparation of a yes environment

2. Choice, supported by the educator’s noticing of play schema and urges

3. Repetition, elevated by the educator’s facilitation of play invitations

4. Voice, understood through the learner’s identity

The Play-Activated Learning model will illuminate the expert you already are and provide you with tools to explain why you teach the way you do, so that all well-intended parties can support the ultimate goal-children’s growth and learning.

Sally Haughey began Fairy Dust Teaching in 2010 from a desire to share her own journey, bringing play-based education to public school settings that often left little room for imagination, curiosity and wonder. After 20 years working on the frontlines, Sally knew there was so much work to be done--so she began sharing what she had learned about how to bring play-based practices into even the most traditional learning environments. Fairy Dust Teaching has now grown into a thriving team that supports a community of over 225,000 educators--and a worldwide movement that is changing the face of childhood education, day by day.