For Your Binder

Play and learning are deeply intertwined. Like yin and yang, play and learning are not only complementary, they are additive, the sum is always greater than their parts. #play #pushdown #DAP #learning 

Worth the cost of the ink to print out all 140 pages!  From page 11:

This playbook aims to give readers:

• insight into gaps and issues inherent in thinking about inclusive playground design and practice

• insight into how inclusive playgrounds and their surroundings are experienced together

• potential strategies that will contribute to project discussions, designs, budgets, and more

• a depth and breadth of ‘how to’ guidance for designing inclusive playgrounds

• ways to ensure that any inclusively designed playground and its surrounding environment are accessible and welcoming to children with disabilities and their families

#play #inclusion #accessibility #equity #environment #recess #playgrounds #DAP #movement #outside #teaching #learning

We know the many benefits of risky play for young children - but are all children being afforded opportunities to engage in this kind of play? Disabled children tend to be over-protected and have their abilities underestimated. Additionally, "accessibility" is not in itself sufficient to ensure the quality of the play experience.  #inclusion #equity #outside #movement #recess

Read more about the growing movement to reconnect children & nature and how to battle nature deficit disorder. The future of children in nature has profound implications not only for the conservation of land but also for the direction of the environmental movement. #outside #nature #play

Hmmmmm can we still trust those bears and dolls? #toys #play #technology

Get the bubblewrap!!!!  This list will make your head pop off - but wait, that's probably not safe either.  #play #outside #recess #risk #movement 

Childhood should be a deep well, full of rich, individual perceptions and experience to which you can return for sustenance throughout life.  #play

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

What say you mom?!?!!?  #DAP #play #parenting #teaching #learning

We went from advocating safety first, to safety only. Read why what adults might call aggressive is a stepping stone to compassion.  #play #DAP #powerplaying 

Here's the backstory: The author, John Taylor, is a retired superintendent of schools in Lancaster, S.C., he offered this history about the essay he wrote while leading that district:  

The parody was originally titled "Absolutely the Best Dentists."  It was written and sent to every newspaper and legislator in South Carolina a number of years ago in an attempt to point out the absurdities inherent in South Carolina's then new accountability act which was focused on absolute performance and threatened retention for every child who couldn't meet very challenging grade level standards. (Not to mention severe penalties for "poorly performing" schools, teachers and administrators.) Since then it has traveled widely to the point that I have not been able to keep up with the uses; but I know it has appeared in teacher association publications in at least three Canadian Provinces and in Australia, as well as dozens in the USA. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) seems to have given the story a new life.  Thus: No Dentist Left Behind.

#pushdown #DAP #play #teaching #learning

The first step in advocating for children's play is to clarify your own values and philosophical orientation! #play #teaching