philosophy for children

What is dessert?

Last week I led two end-of-the-year philosophy sessions. One of the activities I like to do as a last session for the year is a prompt that encourages students to think about what is required for something to count as a dessert. It’s fun, and also is a reminder that philosophical questions can be found What is dessert?

Silence and Philosophy

The traditional model for philosophy sessions in schools involves verbal communication, typically in the form of large group conversations, often in a circle. While this method of leading philosophy sessions has much to offer, not every student is immediately comfortable with this approach. The larger the class size, for example, the more challenging this model Silence and Philosophy

Blind Painter

The “Blind Painter” activity, created by my colleague David Shapiro, is a creative and engaging exercise that always inspires a lively conversation and is a great tool for building community. The activity focuses on two key skills, both important for doing philosophy — clear communication and active listening. When we do philosophy, it’s very important that we learn to Blind Painter

Being Alone and Being Lonely

I decided to write about another of Arnold Lobels’ Frog and Toad stories today. Along with being joyful and charming, Lobel’s work is, in my estimation, among the most deeply philosophical of any children’s book author. In “Alone,” a story in Days With Frog and Toad, Toad shows up at Frog’s house to find a note on Frog’s Being Alone and Being Lonely

Being a Friend

Last week I was in a fourth grade classroom and we read the story The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig, a picture book I’ve written about previously in this blog. We started our discussion with a question asked by one of the students about why Brian thought he was invisible. This students wondered whether Brian should Being a Friend

How Should Our City Be Designed?

A recent article described the ways in which many cities are not child-friendly, examining some of the possibilities for designing cities around urban children and their needs and desires. It led me to think about ways to engage children in thinking about their environments and imagining the elements of what would be in their views How Should Our City Be Designed?

Friendship

“Books! And cleverness! There are more important things – friendship and bravery . . .” Hermione, age 11 From Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling Learning to make friends and figuring out what friendship involves is a significant part of the work of children, and once they enter school they spend more Friendship

Why This Matters

  When I first founded the Center for Philosophy for Children in 1996, very few people in the United States were working or interested in introducing philosophy to children and youth. It has been gratifying to observe in recent years how the movement to introduce philosophy into schools and to reclaim its importance as a Why This Matters