Pre-Kindergarten · Ages 3–4
The Tower Year
Being early at three does not look like reading early. It looks like taking the thing apart to see the inside of it.
Read this one yourself. Nothing in the Pre-K year asks a child to read or write. The work is physical, the questions are asked out loud, and the page is addressed to you.
- 1 Hard Thing
- 5 days · 85 minutes
- 3 unmarkable questions
The Hard Thing · about a grade above
The Tallest Tower
Build the tallest tower you can out of whatever is on one shelf. It only counts if it is still standing when a grown-up counts to ten. Then knock it down yourself and beat it.
Stuck for ten minutes? Good. Open one hint, not three.
1Hint 1
Try the biggest, flattest thing at the bottom.
2Hint 2
If it wobbles, take that layer off and build it again — do not add to a wobble.
3Hint 3
Two things side by side hold more than one thing on its own.
The answer — only after you have written something down
There is no number to beat except your own last tower. Most three-year-olds get four or five pieces standing on the first go and nine or ten by the fourth, and the reason is always the same: they stop grabbing and start choosing the base.
The genius move
“Choose the bottom first.”
Five days, five muscles
The week
Never the same muscle two days running. The weekend is not on this list on purpose — being bored is the sixth muscle and it needs two clear days.
- MondayBuild
The Tallest Tower, three times over. They knock each one down themselves.
20 min - TuesdaySort
Tip out the button jar or the sock basket. They make the groups. Do not tell them what the groups should be.
15 min - WednesdayLook
Outside. Find five things the same colour, then five things the same shape. Shape is much harder and that is the point.
15 min - ThursdayCopy
Lay a pattern in spoons and forks. They copy it. Then they make one and you copy it — and get it wrong on purpose.
15 min - FridayMess
Water, three cups of obviously different sizes, one tray. No lesson, no questions. Just the tray.
20 min
Start Monday now
Set it going, sit on the floor with them, and say nothing for the first two minutes.
Nothing rung today yet
The twenty-five minutes
Four phases. The middle one is most of it, and it is meant to feel slow.
- 1SitRead the problem again, out loud. Write nothing yet.
- 2AttackTry the wrong thing. It is faster than thinking about the right one.
- 3StuckWrite down the exact place you are stuck. “I don’t get it” is not a place.
- 4LogOne sentence: what you will try tomorrow. Then close the book.
No answer key
Three questions you cannot mark
Ask one at dinner. Do not resolve it. A question that survives the washing-up is doing its job.
- ?1
Why does a tower fall over?
- ?2
What is the heaviest thing you can pick up?
- ?3
Could we build a tower all the way to the moon?
Where this goes
The ladder
The same idea, three times, roughly a year apart. This is what depth looks like from the outside.
This year
Towers out of blocks, which are designed to stack.
Next year
Towers out of things never meant to stack — cups, books, shoes. The constraint is the game.
The year after
Bridges. A tower only holds itself up. A bridge has to hold something else.
What lives on the desk this year
- A shelf of blocks at their height, not yours
- A button jar — or pasta, or bottle tops
- A tray that catches water
- Three cups of obviously different sizes
- A box of broken things they are allowed to break further
The rest of Pre-Kindergarten
One hard thing a day is the sharp end. It sits on top of an ordinary year.
Last updated: September 2026