What are the four Ps of creative learning?

Projects, Passion, Peers and Play. Resnick argues that people learn best working on projects tied to their passions, in collaboration with peers, in a playful spirit.

Who is Mitchel Resnick?

Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab, where he leads the Lifelong Kindergarten group that created the Scratch programming language and online community.

What is the creative learning spiral?

Resnick's picture of how kindergartners learn: they imagine what they want to do, create a project, play with it, share it with others, reflect on the results, and imagine again.

Is Lifelong Kindergarten a coding book?

No. It explains how and why kids learn creatively, using Scratch as an example, but it does not teach programming.

Is Lifelong Kindergarten for parents or teachers?

Both, plus people who design learning tools. Its closing section has ten tips written for parents and teachers.

Lifelong Kindergarten – WISE Score & Parent Review | Screenwise

Lifelong Kindergarten

Name: Screenwise
Author: Screenwise

book2017Education, Creativity

92%

WISE Score

The MIT professor who created Scratch on why every age should learn like kindergarten: through projects, passion, peers and play.

Lifelong Kindergarten

book

2017, Education, Creativity

92%

WISE Score

The MIT professor who created Scratch on why every age should learn like kindergarten: through projects, passion, peers and play.

Jump to

Where to Read

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Screenwise Verdict

Lifelong Kindergarten is the best book for a parent who wants their kid making things on a screen instead of only watching. Mitchel Resnick runs the MIT Media Lab group that built Scratch, the free coding tool and community used by millions of kids, and his argument is that kindergarten, with its blocks, paint and building, is how people of every age learn to be creative.

He boils it down to four Ps. Kids learn best working on projects, based on their passions, with peers, in a spirit of play. His stories from Scratch and the Computer Clubhouse network show what that looks like when a kid has the right tools.

It is written for parents, teachers and the people who design learning tools, and the evidence is mostly stories and interviews. It will not teach your kid to code. It will change what you look for in an app.

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The best books about raising kids with screens are mostly about raising kids.

Age Fit

A book for parents, teachers and anyone who designs learning experiences. Most useful for parents of kids from about 5 to 16: ScratchJr is built for ages 5 to 7 and Scratch for about 8 and up, and the four Ps apply at every age.

WISE Breakdown

Wholesome

Generous and hopeful about kids, with a strong emphasis on sharing, helping peers and a kind online community.

Imaginative

A book about imagination by the person behind Scratch, full of kids making games, animations and robots. Creativity is its subject and its spirit.

Safe

Nothing concerning for an adult reader.

Enriching

A clear framework (the four Ps and the creative learning spiral) and practical tips. The evidence is mostly stories and interviews, and it does not teach Scratch itself.

Parent Info

✓

Why It Might Be Great

From the person behind Scratch, the free tool where kids code their own games and animations.
The four Ps (Projects, Passion, Peers, Play) are an easy test for any app, class or summer camp.
A gentle case for screens done well: creating, sharing and remixing instead of scrolling.
Ends with ten tips each for learners, for parents and teachers, and for designers, like "ask authentic questions."
Short, at about 200 pages, with an interview closing each chapter.

⚠

What to Watch For

The book does not teach Scratch. Open Scratch or ScratchJr with your kid and make one small project together to see the four Ps in action.
The evidence is mostly stories from Resnick's own projects. Read it as a philosophy and a set of design principles, not a research review.
Several chapters speak to teachers and app designers. Parents can skip to the tips at the end and the chapter on play.

Conversation Starters

"If you could make any game or animation, what would it be about?"
"What is something you made that you are proud of?"
"Want to make something together this weekend?"

Deep Dive

Kindergarten is the best idea education ever had

Friedrich Froebel opened the first kindergarten in Germany in the 1830s and filled it with blocks, shapes and materials for kids to build and play with. At a 1999 conference on the greatest inventions of the previous thousand years, while others nominated the printing press and the steam engine, Resnick picked kindergarten. The rest of school, he argues, went the other way: desks, worksheets and lectures. Worse, kindergarten itself has been turning more academic, with sand tables and block corners pulled out of classrooms. His book makes the case for running it in reverse, so that every age learns the way 5-year-olds do.

An overhead view of the Lifelong Kindergarten lab at MIT, with worktables covered in building materials, bins and laptops The Lifelong Kindergarten group's space at the MIT Media Lab. Photo from MIT Media Lab.

Projects, Passion, Peers, Play

The four Ps are the whole framework, and they are easy to use on anything your kid does:

Projects: making something, a game, a story, a robot, instead of answering questions.
Passion: working on something they care about, so they keep going when it gets hard.
Peers: sharing, getting feedback and building on other people's ideas.
Play: trying things, taking risks and testing limits.

Behind them is the creative learning spiral: imagine, create, play, share, reflect, and imagine again. Resnick's group built Scratch to run that loop. Kids snap together code blocks to make animations and games, share them in an online community, and remix each other's work. More than 100 million people have registered accounts.

A girl wearing cat ears types on a laptop at a table while a woman leans over to help her A Scratch workshop. Photo from the Scratch Foundation.

What it asks of parents

Resnick's tips for parents and teachers are about stepping back without stepping away. Ask questions you do not know the answer to. Help kids find others who share their interests. Let them tinker, and value the process as much as the product. The Computer Clubhouse chapters make the same point about teaching: the hardest part for adults is landing between taking over and leaving kids alone.

The reviewer David Longman, writing for an education association, admitted he first found it "worthy but not new," then decided it was "one of the more interesting and practical books I have read for a while." He also noted that the evidence is mostly stories and interviews, and that the book will not teach anyone Scratch.

Mitchel Resnick, smiling, with curly gray hair, a beard and glasses, in a white shirt Mitchel Resnick. Photo from MIT Media Lab.

Watch him

Resnick's TEDx talk, "Kindergarten for Our Whole Lives":

A longer Q&A on the book with the Connected Learning Alliance:

Try it at home

Scratch is free in a browser, and ScratchJr puts the same ideas on a tablet for ages 5 to 7. For a parent's starting point, see getting started with Scratch coding for kids. For the research on why creative skills matter, read Becoming Brilliant.

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