Peace education for young children is about nurturing values, attitudes, behaviors, and skills that help children live harmoniously with themselves, others, and the world around them. Here are the fundamental components of peace education for young children.

As educators. we live in four worlds simultaneously. We are a part of a community where we live and work - that community, the people in it, the challenges, and the culture. How do we best live in these four worlds, doing the best we can for all involved?

Collaboration and Peace Education go together naturally. They both use  the skills of listening, communication, sharing exploration, experiences  and tools together. They include a respectful mindset and shared goals.

For early childhood teachers, the meaning of Peace Education is too broad. The great challenge is how to translate these words to the level of these young children who learn through their senses and emotions. 

“When you tell your story, you free yourself and give other people permission to acknowledge their own story.” This book not only helps us get to know people in our field that we may not know about, but it also reminds us that we all have a story to tell.

As we interact with others in our worlds, we sometimes realize that we are not always in a peaceful setting. A “peaceful feeling” is not a constant state of mind, but one that we strive to experience now and again.

It takes a village. And when your village burns down, the community comes together to process, mourn, create, and rebuild, together. Peace Camp was an opportunity to create some semblance of peace and joy and hope.

In Spring of 2025 in Fresno, California an exciting Peaceful Pirate Spring Camp was experienced by fifteen children and four teachers. It was held at a children’s park called Storyland.

I am fortunate to have belonged to one of the last generations able to grow and develop through free play. Being able to go outside and play until the streetlights came on was the best scenery during the weekends and our vacations.

Peace Education emphasizes meeting needs collaboratively, but older wisdom holds that true peace begins within. Individuals must cultivate inner peace before they can fully and successfully walk the paths of peace with others.

As educators, we have a unique opportunity to model for and encourage the children in our care to recognize unfairness and develop empathy and skills to stand up for themselves and others.

When we think of play, we usually picture dolls and balls. However, we are taking it to a deeper level as we look at subtle stories about play. Playing with words, ideas, concepts and problem solving can be as much fun as playing with dolls and balls, especially as we get older.

I am fortunate to have belonged to one of the last generations able to grow and develop through free play. Being able to go outside and play until the streetlights came on was the best scenery during the weekends and our vacations, a feeling I'm sure many of you can relate to. 

There are many different approaches to play. This article will look at approaches that are developmentally appropriate for Toddlers through TK. It will discuss what is developmentally appropriate and what is the educator’s role to facilitate that play.

Not a Box by Antoinette Portis is about a rabbit with imagination. A cardboard box is not a box – it’s a spaceship, a race car, a robot or anything else the rabbit can playfully dream up! Another box story, Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran is about some imaginative children who lived in the desert.

I found this book last year. I was so engaged in every page that I brought it to my colleagues at Educators for Peaceful Classrooms and Communities. What spoke to me the most (and there were lots more), was that the focus on lesson plans, weekly themes, meeting standards, etc. was replacing a joyful frame of mind and really  BEING WITH the children and how important that is.

Diversity comes in all sorts of ways and forms! Consider the many different ways that we all have of being, of communicating, of living our lives… not to mention the visible diversity of hair, eyes, skin… the list goes on!

You might expect a book written by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu to be religious in nature (they do speak of their faith), but this book crosses all political, religious, and ethnic boundaries speaking to us as human beings living on Earth with other human beings.

Diversity has a broad meaning that provides us the opportunity to write extensively about it. Still, in these times when it is proving extremely difficult to broaden understanding of what diversity is, and how beneficial it is, it is hard for us, as teachers, to implement in our classrooms.

With those three teaching attributes (hands on, observation, stepping back) this parent’s expertise is so etched in my memory. This whole picture plays out. Along with the empowered wave and smile of satisfaction I would see if I peeked my head out the door as he left his shared pedagogy.