For Your Binder

Remember, these are in addition to all those big juicy large motor verbs that are crucial if you want strong hands in the first place!  #DAP #teaching #learning #movement #writing

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

Getting closer to YES!  #teaching #learning #art #creativity #play

Policymakers persist in ignoring the huge discrepancy between what we know about how young children learn and what we actually do in preschools and kindergartens. #play #pushdown #teaching #learning #DAP

Many preschools in the United States are actually doing the polar opposite of what the research recommends. Couple this article (from 2018) with the recent findings from the Vanderbilt Study and there is simply no reason for play to be pushed aside any longer!   #play #DAP #teaching #learning

Unit blocks have been around for over 100 years!  Why is their potential still so often underestimated?? #math #play #blocks #DAP #learning #teaching

FUN FACT! Mother Nature installed the “play drive” for the same reason she installed that other drive – the drive to reproduce: BOTH are critical for the species to continue. (In fact, play makes you into the kind of person someone would want to reproduce WITH.)  #play #teaching #learning

This was the first American Academy of Pediatrics article (well, that caught everyone's attention anyway) that mentioned the importance of play. 11 years later they released another statement but ramped up the language saying that play was crucial to a child's healthy development.  I often wonder if they sat around saying to each other, really? we gotta say this again?   #DAP #play #parenting #teaching #learning

After I read this one I wrote on the top of the page, first do no harm. We KNOW that #play is what needs to be happening.  Why do we (not present company "we" but I think you know what I mean!) insist on trying to get different results????  We (the same "we") must stop dismissing data because we don't like the results!  #DAP #teaching #learning #Vanderbilt #Tennessee

Twenty years later.... still committed to the creation of a society which revolves around a multiracial center. #teaching #learning #equity

This article is adapted from Paul Tough's 2016 book, Helping Children Succeed: What works and why  #teaching #learning #DAP #resilience #play

Schools may be shooting themselves in the foot by taking away recess and playtime that is crucial to a child's growth. #play #recess #outside #movement #teaching #learning