In 2009, I was teaching early childhood education students at Warren Wilson College when I discovered a short book on the importance of play in early childhood education. Being a big proponent of learning through play, I read “Child’s Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play” by Vivian Gussin Paley (2004). At the time, I had been engaged in early childhood education for 38 years, and was nearing retirement. I had taught both half-day and full-day programs in early childhood and had also been an administrator, and now I was teaching at a four-year liberal arts college, with the Verner Center for Early Learning as the site where my students practiced what we were learning.

In this book, Paley wrote of taking dictated stories from children and then bringing the group together to have the author’s peers act out their story.