preschool

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The Gift of Play: Everybody Needs It

Gallery | Posted on by Jill Telford

Everybody needs a little love in their lives but you know what else everybody needs? Play.

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. —Plato

While in Vang Vieng, Laos, we happened to catch children playing from a far distance. No grown ups present. They climbed through tree roots, explored water, caught fish and laughed a lot. They waded water in the stream made their way out and found a large paint roller and rolled it all around in the dirt. I smiled and reminisced as my nostalgic childhood materialized.

“That’s what play looks and feels like. That’s honoring childhood.” My partner and I started sharing about our childhoods. How we were fortunate that ours looked like the childhood the children were playing in right before our very eyes. Childhood is finite and infinite at the same time. It lives on.

No fences, no dittos, no rules. Freedom. To feel and play. True play gives us a push into being in our body and mind. Everything is connected: spatial awareness to making connections. 

Play gives children practice to what they are learning and observing. It works for grown ups too in life, family and business. Want to learn more about your colleagues in less time? Keep it simple. Kick the typical “meeting” and get out there and play. 

Play Opens Doors

No matter where children and grown ups live or what they’re overcoming, play is essential.

It opens doors and shows us what we’re capable of and what we’re passionate about. It shows us who we are and are meant to be. We all are competent, capable and creative human beings. From birth until we die, we have to play in our purpose.

Play Promotes Collaboration

Listening and talking. Everyone plays a part in it. From role play / interacting with others to make believe / symbolic thinking. Even without someone else…being able to collaborate with yourself in your own world is the art of meditation. Play is meditation.

Play Gives Grace to Fail and Try, Try Again

Riding a bike to kicking a ball. You ride, you crash. You kick, you miss. You try again.

What did you love to play as a child? As an adult? Did it change? Why? 

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education, earlyed, behavior, development, children, family, help

Don’t Draw on the Table and Don’t Draw on the Walls

Gallery | Posted on by Jill Telford

A child said, “Look, she’s drawing on the table!” I noticed she was in fact drawing on the table. I also noticed she was not drawing on the table in a destructive way but she was drawing on the table in a figuring something out kind of way. She drew the colors of the rainbow on one side out of order and on the other in order. 

I looked. I peered over. I knelt down and asked her why. She said, “I’m trying to figure out the pattern of the rainbow. The order of it.” I smiled. I said, “Artists do that. Some need to visually see it and play around with the color. Next time use scraps of paper to experiment with color. I handed her some paper and she started drawing and drawing lines and lines as she sorted out and ordered the colors of the rainbow line by line. All on her own initiative.

After she drew arches and created each part of the rainbow from red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. 

She smiled. She took out tape and hung up her rainbow. 

The process was amazing. I was a fly on the wall for a moment. 

Look at what happens when we simply don’t say “Don’t draw on the table!” Look what happens when we ask higher level thinking questions and wonder with children. Amazing work and “play” happens creatively, constructively coming from the child’s own being. 

Beautiful. In the words of Langston Hughes “It’s beautiful and ugly too.” The process. When we give space, time and a lot of understanding — a lot of magic happens.

dreams, earlyed, education, family, preschool

Rock, Paper, Scissors. Sticks and Stones.

Gallery | Posted on by Jill Telford

Rocks literally rock. Rocks like boxes can become anything you want. In our preschool classroom we have been really into rocks. Actually even outside of our classroom, children have been collecting and using rocks in symbolic ways. Here are all of the ways we have been using rocks.
1. Collecting them which results in sorting, measuring, how much space we need, sizes of rocks and boxes needed to store them
2. Making up stories as we use rocks in symbolic ways representing the characters and props (i.e. building a bridge and re-enacting/retelling the stoy of the three billy goats gruff. We used small, medium and large stones to symbolize the sizes of the goats and one unique stone to represent the troll.
3. Make houses and caves out of them
4. Make shelves
5. Make flooring
6. Paint them and leave them in your neighborhood for others to find
7. Skip them over water
8. Build with them
9. Little grave stones for dead creatures from birds to bees and so many more!
10. A Rock Band (great polay on words)
11. Rolling Stones literally rolling them or rocking with them
Happy “rock”ing out.
death, education, earlyed, behavior, development, children, family, help, life

We All Die or Do We?

Gallery | Posted on by Jill Telford

To Die or Not to Die?

That is the question.

“We all die and go to Heaven.”

“We become angels when we die.”

“No we don’t.”
“Yes we do.”
“No we don’t.”
“Yes, we do.”
“All of us die. We turn into angels. And, we go to Heaven!”
A metal pail is thrown.
“We DON’T DIE.” 
“Yes, we do!”
“My Mom said we do. We all die and go to Heaven.”
We are born and we die. 
Or do we?
Our preschool classroom has me question everything about our life and spiritual existence.
Life is death and death is life.
C’est le vie. C’est la mort.

Do we ever really die?

That is the real question.

advocacy, children, DAP, education, earlyed, behavior, development, children, family, help, family, life, preschool, school

Let Your Voice Ring. Sing Everywhere. Even if You’re Off Key. 

Gallery | Posted on by Jill Telford

I remember singing in the car with my older sister during my formative years. Janet boomed from our car speakers: “Thats the way, thats the way, thats the way love goes.” We would sing our hearts out. I reminisced about my childhood memories of singing a lot during my last night drive with my other sister and we sang a lot during our road trip.

When is the last time you sang in the car? In the shower? With your family? Singing has endless benefits for our young and old. An Alzheimer’s patient may not remember their name but you know what they can remember? They can remember their favorite song!

Singing in the early education classroom is one of the keys for brain plasticity and growth. During the first five years of life the most connections (think synapses) are made out of the entire lifespan.  Every year of a child’s life is precious, but when it comes to development, the first 8 are the most important. This is when a child becomes the person they are going to be. It is when they learn appropriate behavior, boundaries, empathy and many other important social skills that will remain with them for life. Guess what else will stay with a child for life? Their favorite jams!

Babies are born with more synapses than adults. In a child’s early development stages, the speed of the synapse formation is the greatest from birth until 18 months of age. From 18 months until 3 years of age during the process of cognitive development in kids, synapses continue to form and expand. The number of synapses reaches about 1,000 trillion at this age and because of that a toddler’s brain is twice as active as an adult’s brain. This is also the reason why toddlers enjoy heavy outdoor activities such as running, jumping and climbing. From 6 to 9 years of age in kids’ development stage, the brain reduces the number of synapses which are not used and they eventually die off.

So sing. Sing your heart out! Play Motown to Country. Most of all sing and dance to your favorite songs and ask families for their favorites. Home school connection is powerful. Even change the lyrics to the songs.

Here are 7 benefits of singing. For more benefits click: https://takelessons.com/live/singing/health-benefits-of-singing

  1. Singing creates a better sense of well being and causes us sensations of feeling good.
  2. Improves concentration, alertness and memory.
  3. Singing strengthens the immune system. That’s right it’s good for our health like an apple. A song a day keeps the doctor away.
  4. Singing is in fact exercise
  5. It helps with sleeping well and getting a good night’s Zzz.
  6. It lowers stress levels
  7. It’s a natural anti-depressant

So, turn the speaker up and sing like no one’s listening or watching!

advocacy, children, DAP, daycare, earlyed, education, education, earlyed, behavior, development, children, family, help, family, play, preschool, relationships

I AM a TEACHER. A Letter From Your Early Childhood Educators

Gallery | Posted on by Jill Telford

198E4AED-2A49-44E1-B4C3-B541220137C8We need your help. Imagine, we’re playing basketball. We’re on the same team and my head is up and I’m looking to pass the ball as I dribble up the court. I need to pass the ball to you. Likewise, pass it back. Back and forth with a series of exchanges which is what we want to have, a good conversation. A conversation that will create an opportunity to score and most of all, solve something bigger together.

So here goes, most of you know we are not daycare workers. We are teachers. We even further distinguish ourselves as an integral part of the life-long learning process as we specialize in early childhood. We’re not elementary, middle school or secondary teachers. We are Early childhood teachers. NAEYC also pushes this with a major initiative called Power to the Profession found here: www.naeyc.org

We are Reggio Inspired teachers and we need help in closing the misunderstanding of who we are in education. We are teachers. We are early childhood educators.

Children learn best through their everyday experiences with the people they love and trust, and when the learning is fun. We, the teachers at TCS, specialize in this. We know how to meet children where they are and help them to where they are going.

A child’s brain undergoes an amazing period of development from birth to five, producing more than a million neural connections each second.

Moreover, the development of the brain is influenced by many factors, including a child’s relationships, experiences and environment. More info here: https://www.zerotothree.org/espanol

We, you and our communities are connected on the same page and goal of educating our children. We want them to be caring citizens of or world. We want them to be better than us. We want all children to be better than previous generations, no matter where they are from. Zip codes shouldn’t matter when it comes to access to high quality care and learning as all children matter.

There is a major wealth, educational and opportunity gap in our country and do we expect you to fix it? Can we fix it right now? No, but we need to talk about it. We need to start there. Reggio Emilia was founded in social justice. History echoes and now is our time to change and change happens from within a society and systems. We are society. We can lead and start doing the right thing especially since we have the resources.

Reggio Emilia came about during the post-World War II era in Italy, the “…desire to bring change and create anew” accompanied with great economic and social development, including in education.

We are calling for action on three things understanding that we are teachers, closing the wealth and educational achievement gap and most of all, what we teach children: taking care of each other.

With love,

The Play Alliance

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