For Your Binder

The first days of preschool can be stressful for everyone. In this short but helpful article, Lillian Katz offers a few ideas that might assist both parents and teachers.  #environment #learning #teaching #relationships #care 

What is the relationship between an invitation and provocation?  Do we use the words interchangeably? Is there really a difference? Might invitations lead to provocations? In this article the author offers some food for thought as to how she uses these terms. #teaching #learning #environment

It's only the abstract to the study, but the message is still clear: fewer toys leads to increased focus and more creative play. #play #toys #teaching #learning #environment

It's important to make sure neighborhoods have diverse environmental qualities that encourage children & caregivers to stay physically active, meet friends and connect with the natural environment.  #play #outside #movement 

Published in Pediatrics in June 2022 this link will bring you to the abstract which, although not the full paper,  provides enough data to remind us that young children are still not moving around enough. #play #movement #outside #recess #DAP #environment

This document came on my radar while I was taking the Pop Up Adventure Play Playworker Development Course 

I quickly realized that it serves as a functional "how-to" manual for anyone who not only says they want to be play based, but is really ready to put their money where their mouth is and make it happen.  The document is from 2019 so I am not sure if the workshops and consulting piece they mention is still available, but it's a worthy read all the same.  I read it three times and am still gleaning insight.  #play #teaching #learning #environment 

This article was written by the lead researcher in what is simply referred to now as "The #Vanderbilt Study" - in it she reminds us that greater focus on academics for three and four year olds is not the solution. Her metaphor of an iceberg is a powerful visual; the tip of the iceberg are things we can see (read: measure) like ABCs and 123s, but what is below the surface?  What has actually made these other things visible? Curiosity, persistence, self-control... and when are those skills developed? When children #play !!!!!  #Tennessee #DAP #teaching #learning #environment #pushdown

A classroom environment is a public statement about the educational values of the program AND the teacher.  What does your say? #environment #art #create #teaching #learning

Exploring panopticon as a program of power as opposed to an architectural system.  #learning #environment #panopticon

When it feels like common sense and everyone should just "know it" (but they don't) it can be affirming to read about why it feels that way.  Bottom-up behaviors are instinctual and unintentional. Top-down ones are deliberate and intentional. There is a difference. And how we approach them needs to be differentiated as well! #teaching #learning #relationships #specialed #expulsion #environment

This link will bring you to a very generous "snippets of the paper" page, it includes more than just the abstract though and some of you might have institutional access to the full study.   There has been little exploration into risky play in the context of urban neighborhoods so this study does just that. Not surprisingly, the study finds that there are enormous inequities in the distribution of wealth within cities which directly and indirectly impact outdoor play and hoe play spaces are maintained.  #play #outside #risk #environment #equity

Are the walls influencing learning? #environment #teaching #learning #art #creativity