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Our Curriculum Was Designed to Plug and Play

By |2025-06-29T09:29:09-04:00Jun 29th, 2025|Blog|

Before my work with Preston Blackburn, I was an Early Childhood Education (ECE) Teacher, working most of my decade-long career with two and three-year-olds. When I explain to other educators, I understand how difficult it can be to manage AND meet the standards required of us, I truly do. However, what if I could [...]

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Christmas in Spring

By |2025-05-15T18:00:17-04:00May 14th, 2025|Blog|

Opening gifts on Christmas morning or your birthday is something special and thrilling. It is the culmination of the anticipation of knowing you will receive toys you’ve wanted for so long. You imagine yourself opening a gift, peeling open the paper, and tearing at the box filled with pure excitement and the rush of [...]

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Heavy Work

By |2025-05-06T06:45:11-04:00May 6th, 2025|Blog|

Heavy Work, Learning, and Behavior Heavy work helps kids' brains understand their bodies through a tricky little thing called the proprioceptive system.  When they don't get enough information through this essential system, their brains make their bodies move anyway to fill this developmental need.  It may look like bad behavior, or an inability to [...]

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How Movement Can Positively Influence Autism Spectrum Disorder

By |2025-04-22T18:37:12-04:00Apr 22nd, 2025|Blog|

My name is Kelsey Schmidt, and for those of you who may not know who I am, I’m the Director of Sales, Marketing, and Social Media for both Pivot to Play and Pop Hop and Rock. If you’re unaware, April is Autism Awareness Month. Every year, beginning on April 2nd, those who have or [...]

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Let’s Make Structured Play Sexy Again

By |2025-04-04T07:17:05-04:00Apr 3rd, 2025|Blog|

We have to lay it out: the case for structured play during the school day Unstructured play, aka recess, is considered far more sexy than structured play, aka PE.  Of late, recess is the darling of play advocates who point to its developmental necessity. If you googled: “How much time do children spend in [...]

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Why Kids Need Messy Play

By |2025-03-26T15:02:06-04:00Mar 26th, 2025|Blog|

Just for a moment, I want you to sit, close your eyes, and think back to a memory where you fully engaged in the kind of play that left dirt stains on your clothing, eliciting tingles of joy while collecting nature's treasures and possibly resulting in a scrape or two. Remember feeling the grass [...]

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How Many Senses Do We Have?

By |2025-03-26T14:17:44-04:00Mar 26th, 2025|Blog|

We all know the five senses we learned in grade school: Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch.  Each of these works together to help our brains understand and interpret our world.  Whether it is the taste of a tart lemon, the feeling of mud between our fingers, or the smell of fresh mint, our brains [...]

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Physical Literacy

By |2025-03-05T13:17:16-05:00Mar 5th, 2025|Blog|

We talk about moving a lot.  We talk about physicality a lot.  And sometimes, when we train teachers or speak at conferences, people don’t hear “moving” or “physicality” they hear “sports.” It is important to understand that what we do is not about sport.  Sport is great, but it isn’t for everybody.  However, physical [...]

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Trucks or Tutus, Pink or Blue, Part 2

By |2025-02-25T16:47:06-05:00Feb 25th, 2025|Blog|

Girls. Some prefer tutus and tiaras, others prefer dirty overalls and playing with the boys. Either way, all girls are biologically the same and in this month’s newsletter we’re going to dive into the beauty that makes them who they are. Much like boys, we will highlight key differences that uniquely make a girl, well
a [...]

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Trucks or Tutus, Pink or Blue

By |2025-01-26T11:38:41-05:00Jan 26th, 2025|Blog|

In the days of Beaver Cleaver and Samantha Stephens, boys wore blue, girls wore pink, boys played as firemen, and girls were housewives.  Today, those lines are not as hard and fast, and most of us know preschool-aged boys who might wear a towel over their heads, so they seem to have long hair [...]

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