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 [...]
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 youâve 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 [...]
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 [...]
My name is Kelsey Schmidt, and for those of you who may not know who I am, Iâm the Director of Sales, Marketing, and Social Media for both Pivot to Play and Pop Hop and Rock. If youâre unaware, April is Autism Awareness Month. Every year, beginning on April 2nd, those who have or [...]
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: âHow much time do children spend in [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
We talk about moving a lot. We talk about physicality a lot. And sometimes, when we train teachers or speak at conferences, people donât hear âmovingâ or âphysicalityâ they hear âsports.â It is important to understand that what we do is not about sport. Sport is great, but it isnât for everybody. However, physical [...]
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 monthâs newsletter weâre 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, wellâŠa [...]
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 [...]
