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Child-led Mastery Academy Courses and Summits
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Free webinar

For early childhood educators

Play-based teaching has fundamentals. When you know them, children thrive.

Most of us were never taught how to set up, watch and support real play. Sally Haughey spent thirty years on the classroom floor learning it. Now she teaches it to educators in more than 120 countries.

Join the free monthly webinar Explore Play Academy
30 years in early childhood classrooms Educators in 120+ countries Author of Nurturing Brilliance
A boy at the Hummingbird Cottage pinches dried petals into a glass jar, lavender beside him

The gap no one names

A busy table can still be missing the play.

The trays are set. The materials are beautiful. The children are busy. And an adult has already decided what will happen at every station.

Most of us were trained this way. We were handed activities and told they were play. No one showed us the fundamentals: how children choose, how to read what they are working on, when to step in and when to wait.

So the hands stay busy and the thinking stays small. The child never gets to decide, to wonder, or to build an idea all the way through.

This gap was never yours to close alone. The fundamentals can be taught, and once you have them, you see play differently for good.

A wooden table set with trays of green dough, flower petals and glass gems
Sally leans in with delight as a young boy sorts petals at a table

The approach

Play is every child's right. How you facilitate it matters.

Sally teaches the craft of play-based practice the way she learned it: on the floor, beside real children. Her trainings use footage from the Hummingbird Cottage, her multi-age, fully choice-based play setting, so you see each practice happen.

  • PrepareAn environment children can truly choose from, with materials that invite more than one answer.
  • ObserveWhat a child is working on, in their hands, their words and their body.
  • NameThe learning you see, so you can support it, plan for it and share it with families.
Children walk beneath raised silks of blue, orange and red under the trees
The child's heart is the true curriculum.

The Hummingbird Cottage, spring 2026

Where to begin

Three ways in

Whether you teach, lead a program or plan the event, there is a place to start this month.

Two children work over a metal tray of water and leaves
For educators

Learn to name the learning in play

A free live session with Sally every month. Bring your questions. Leave with one thing to try on Monday.

Save my seat
Sally sits on a low stool as children move freely through a sunlit playroom
For school leaders

Professional learning your whole team grows into

Play Academy brings courses, curriculum and the Play-Based Learning Specialist certification to your staff. Enrollment opens in January 2027.

Join the Play Academy waitlist
Sally plays a drum as children gather in a circle with their own drums
For event organizers

Talks that change how a room sees play

Keynotes and workshops on curiosity, and on the nonverbal signals that build trust with children.

Book a discovery call
Sally laughs as a group of children wrap her in a hug

Your guide

Thirty years on the floor with children.

Sally Haughey trained as a fine artist and painted for a decade. In 1996 she walked into her first early childhood classroom and stayed. Waldorf training, public school kindergarten and National Board Certification followed.

She has taught educators online since 2010. Today she runs the Hummingbird Cottage and writes about what children show us when we finally slow down enough to watch.

30years in early childhood classrooms
120+countries where educators learn with Sally
2010teaching educators online since
NBCTEarned National Board Certification

The book

Children are already brilliant. Notice it.

Nurturing Brilliance is an invitation to see what is happening inside a child's play, and to know what to do with what you see. It is the ideas behind everything Sally teaches, in one place you can hold.

Get the book
Two girls lean together over a water tray filled with flowers