Playvolution HQ Podcast

Jeff Johnson
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The Playvolution HQ Podcast dives deep into play and early learning, from loose parts and power play to school readiness and curriculum. This weekly, short-format show goes beyond the resources available at playvolutionhq.com, delivering original content like DIY ideas, terminology deep-dives, commentary, news, early learning history, and more.

Episodes

  1. 28/07/2025

    PHQP_0030 More Knowledgeable Others

    In episode PHQP_0030 More Knowledgeable Others, Jeff talks about More Knowledgeable Others and misses his grandma. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0030 More Knowledgeable Others Episode Notes Vygotsky’s More Knowledgeable Other Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory Vygotsky’s Zone Of Proximal Development The ART Of Effective Direct Instruction The ART Of Effective Direct Instruction Handout Play And Its Role In The Mental Development Of The Child Near Peer Self-Study–Understanding The More Knowledgeable Other Show Notes Subscribe | Video Episodes or Audio Episodes Contact Jeeves The Intern | jeeves@playvolutionhq.com Contact Jeff | podcast@playvolutionhq.com Support The Show Via Amazon | Shop Jeff’s Amazon Associate link Support The Show With A Membership | Become a member Make A One-Time Contribution | Buy us a shot Share Content | Share photos and short videos of kids at play Visit | Playvolution HQ or Explorations Early Learning About | Jeff Training | Learn about upcoming online events or booking an event The More Knowledgeable Others Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I’m Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play. On with the show. So I was baking bread the other day, which I do once a month or so, and I had a grandma recipe realization. Every summer when we’re on family vacation, we would go to my grandparents’ farm in north, north central North Dakota, um, 50 miles or so from the Canadian border. And one of the things that happened every trip besides going fishing with my grandpa is we would, I would bake bread with my grandma and something she did like maybe once a week, once every week and a half or two weeks through decades and decades of being a farm wife. And I love the experience and I loved being at her elbow. And I had this realization that every time we baked bread together, she had this recipe card out and we were going through the card step by steps by step. And I realized that she didn’t need that card, that card. I’ve baked bread enough to know that you quickly memorize your bread baking recipe. There’s not a lot of ingredients. Um, she had that card out for me. It was a teachable moment for me. It was a chance to learn to follow instructions for me. I don’t, I don’t know if she intended it that way, but to, to some degree I’m sure she did because there’s no way she needed to dig that card out every time she baked bread because she’d been doing it for 40 years by the time I was at her elbow helping. Um, and that got me reminiscing and feeling sad about not having her in my life anymore. She was born in the late 19 teens and grew up in the twenties and, uh, lived through the depression and World War II and was a wonderful, caring, loving woman. And that’s not what this episode is about. So, um, love you grandma to grandma if she happens to be listening from any place. But what we’re talking about is the more knowledgeable other, which she was an example of. A more knowledgeable other. Um, well first, let’s look at Lev. Lev Vygotsky is the dude who came up with this concept. He was born in 1896, lived, uh, 37 years, died in 1934 of tuberculosis. He was born in Belarus, which was then a part of Soviet Union. And for decades after his death, his work was suppressed by the Soviets. Um, not just suppressed from the rest of the world, but suppressed within the Soviet Union. And then in the sixties, when relations with the West were starting to thaw, his, uh, his work was shared. And, and so we went decades without knowing some of the, the ideas this man had. And the more knowledgeable other and the zone of proximal development and other things that he worked on, uh, have daily impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of children around the world. And one of his ideas was the more knowledgeable other. And so short definition, a more knowledgeable other is anyone or anything with more expertise, skill, understanding, experience than the learner. And this can be kind of a wide range of, uh, of, of entities. It can be parents, which are probably the primary, more knowledgeable other in the lives of, of especially young children. It can be caregivers, excuse me, and teachers, peers, near peers, siblings, but beyond that books, videos, and even pets. I’ll, I’ll give you an example in a moment. Um, people in the communities, uh, relatives, uh, just about any, I mean, literally anybody who might have more knowledge or experience or information than a child can serve as a more knowledgeable other. Um, and just an example, you know, to the extent this goes, we’ll look at pets. So let’s, uh, transition here to this video and see how this goes here. So dog gives the ball to the baby, baby kicks the ball a little bit. Not quite as far as the dog wants it to go, but the dog brings it back. Baby tries to throw the ball, ball doesn’t move very far, kicks the ball. Oh, then we get a decent throw in. The dog brings it back as quick as can be. This dog is teaching this baby how to play the game of fetch. The dog had more knowledge about this game because the dog has played with, with more skilled fetchers, but is very skilled at teaching, at teaching the game to, to this little human, right? So more knowledgeable others can be this, this wide range of things. Uh, books, for example, if you are a dinosaur kid and you’re five, six, seven, eight years old, and you’re really into dinosaurs, um, a stack of dinosaur books are going to be very useful, more knowledgeable others in your seat, in your efforts to seek more information about dinosaurs. So there’s this wide range. Um, the MKO’s primary role is to guide the learner through the zone of proximal development. Uh, and we’ll end up doing another episode with, uh, digging into the, the zone of proximal development, but ZDP, Zone of Proximal Development, is that space between what someone can do independently and what they can achieve with a bit of help. And it’s so, so there’s, it’s this little gap, and what more knowledgeable others do is they help, um, the learner over that gap. And so like, like the dog in that video, the dog was, was helping the, the little one understand that you got to get the ball to go a little bit further if you want this game to work. And then the game worked for both of them, and then the dog and toddler, mobile infant, both got to enjoy the game of fetch. So more knowledgeable other helps bridge that gap in the zone of proximal development between what someone can do independently and what they can achieve with a little bit of help. Um, MKOs, more knowledgeable others, what they, what you, what you’re doing as a more knowledgeable other is you’re, you’re, you’re modeling, and you’re providing hints, and you’re offering encouragement, and you’re maybe providing some direct instruction, and you’re engaging in dialogue. And it doesn’t have to be much more than, than that. The, the dog example was, was engaged in modeling. Another example of modeling is if you want a child to learn how to use a handsaw or a hammer, one of the great simplest ways to do that is to, to demonstrate how to pound in the nail or how to saw through a board, and then put the tool on their, their hand and let them do it. So a little bit of direct instruction in modeling, and kids pick up tools like, like those skills. Learning to tie their shoes, for example. Hints can come in handy. Say you get a child sitting, they’re painting, and they aren’t rinsing out their brush, going from one color to another color, and then they get frustrated that the, the color that ends up on their piece of paper isn’t the color that they want. It’s a smeary brownish gray mess. You, I’m getting blurry, see if I can bring the camera back into focus. You might make a simple suggestion or, or notice, hey, I wonder what would happen if you dipped your brush in that water and wiped it off with a paper towel before you picked a new color, and then you move on with your day. And out of the corner of your eye, you notice you’re, the child experiment with this. They take the, the paint brush that’s covered in a orangish, greenish, brownish, bluish mess, and they rinse it off, and they dip it in the green, and then they paint actual green on their paper instead of this mud color, and you’ve helped them bridge that gap. And the next time they want to change colors, it’s likely that that’s going to stick in their head, and they’re going to rinse that brush out before they move on. It’s, it’s kind of a fascinating interesting thing. So, more knowledgeable others. An example of that, I mean, literally yesterday, yesterday, was it yesterday? Yeah, it was yesterday. No, it’s a Sunday, Friday, Friday night, so day and a half ago. I’m, I’m a wild, a wild Friday night here at the Snuggery. I’m doing laundry, and I, I noticed I go to take things out of the dryer, and the things in the dryer are still wet, and I push the button on the dryer, and the dryer doesn’t spin, and I had a bunch of wet laundry, but I, I was pretty sure it was the dryer belt had broken. I went to a more knowledgeable other, which happened to be an, an AI assistant on my computer, and I, I shared a picture of the information plate for my dryer, and within seconds, the AI assistant looked up the dryer, found the manual, came up with a, a list of possible problems, broken belt being the top one, gave me instructions for how to check this, the, which screws I needed to take out to take the dryer apart, just enough to notice if the belt was there or not. I did that, found the belt was missing and broken, and AI gave me the model number. Within 45 minutes, I had the part ordered, and it arrived right before I started recording. This afternoon, I’ll use another more knowledgeable other, probably a, a YouTube video of somebody replacing a belt on this exact model of

    15 min

  2. 21/07/2025

    PHQP_0029 Sample Staff Fitness Standards

    In episode PHQP_0029 Sample Staff Fitness Standards, Jeff follows up on a promise made in episode 23 to share sample staff fitness standards. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0029 Sample Staff Fitness Standards Episode Notes PHQP_0023 Fit For Care Why American Kids Grow Up Hating Exercise Show Notes Subscribe | Video Episodes or Audio Episodes Contact Jeeves The Intern | jeeves@playvolutionhq.com Contact Jeff | podcast@playvolutionhq.com Support The Show Via Amazon | Shop Jeff’s Amazon Associate link Support The Show With A Membership | Become a member Make A One-Time Contribution | Buy us a shot Share Content | Share photos and short videos of kids at play Visit | Playvolution HQ or Explorations Early Learning About | Jeff Training | Learn about upcoming online events or booking an event The Sample Staff Fitness Standards Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I’m Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on with the show. So, my dogs Slinky and Gigi are getting old. Slinky was napping today and it was time to go out and I just kind of gave him a little nudge with my foot to wake him up and he just shook like a bowl full of jello and didn’t, I thought he passed away during his nap and I was befuddled and I nudged him again and oh hey, hey boss, ready to go? And we got up, but he is filling up with tumors and someday I’m gonna, he’s just not gonna be awake from his nap and I’m gonna be heartbroken. Gigi is slowing down too. When we first moved to the beach three years ago, we’d go for five mile walks every morning and then maybe again in the afternoon, we’d put a couple miles in and about a year ago, Slinky just stopped going for the beach. He just goes outside and takes care of his business now and that’s about it. Now Gigi’s slowing down and why am I throwing that here in the podcast? Because life comes at you fast and you gotta make the most of it and enjoy those moments that are good when you can because sometimes the more savory, less sweet moments come up and that’s kind of what I’m going through with my pups now and it kind of breaks my heart knowing that at some point in the probably not too long future for Slinky and the mid-range future for Gigi, it’s gonna be the end for them. So that’s kind of a depressing way to start the podcast but if you got thoughts about little pets, let me know. On with our one topic for this week. I said I’d come back, episode 23, I think it was, I talked about staff fitness standards and the lack of them and maybe the need for them because it is important to have staff who can keep up with the kids if you want kids to be physically active. And so I said in that episode, I don’t wanna rehash that whole episode but I said I’d come back with some sample fitness standards and that’s what we’re gonna get into this episode. I know I wanna preface this, I talked about this in episode 23 as well. We need to be able to make accommodations in fitness standards because people are differently abled and we want to have those people working in the early learning profession because I think it’s good for them and good for the children and good for the culture and civilization as a whole. On the other hand, we need to have enough people on staff who can meet the physical standards, some basic physical standards for health and safety reasons. And so while I throw these sample standards out there, I’m not saying every single person on the staff needs to be able to meet these, but absolutely there need to be enough staff people in the ratio at any time, on the premises at any time, that can handle the physical demands of the job. And beyond that, we make accommodations for people. Let’s take a look at these though. So first, I think strength is, one of those standards we need to have. You need to have a certain level of strength before you can successfully work in this profession. There’s a lot of lifting, a lot of toting to do, not only of kids, but of equipment. And so I think a reasonable strength standard for the early learning profession is the ability to repeatedly lift and carry up to 40 pounds. That’s getting a almost preschooler toddler up on the changing table when you need to. That’s moving tires that are out of the playground as loose parts around. That’s hefting and hauling the water play table around the playground, those kinds of things. Filling up, carrying a cooler up to the playground for a picnic lunch, all those kinds of things. And so the ability to repeatedly lift and carry up to 40 pounds, I think is a very reasonable strength standard for caregivers. And again, for health and safety terms, if we do need to do a building evacuation, there needs to be somebody who, there needs to be enough people on staff who can physically get all of those kids out of that building in a reasonable amount of time. Next up is mobility and flexibility. The ability to bend and twist and turn and get up off the ground and all those kind of things. So I think the standard should be that we should have staff on call, on duty all the time in the ratios at all time that have the ability to bend, kneel, crouch, sit on the floor, and then get up again multiple times each day. And I know for a fact there are programs who struggle with this one. And if you get one or two people on staff who can’t meet the standard for whatever reason, they had a hip replacement, whatever, that’s understandable. Accommodations can be made. And we need to have people who can do these things. Because if we’re gonna interact with kids, we need to be able to put ourselves in the positions kids are in. And that means if we’re working with infants and toddlers, we need to be able to get down on their level. If we’re doing circle time with kids, we need to be able to get down on the floor with them, those kind of things. And so again, not an unreasonable standard, I don’t think. Next up is endurance. And so endurance, I think a reasonable standard is the ability to stand, walk, and run for extended periods each day. Because if we’re going to create an active, engaging, motion-based environment for kids, and that’s what we should be doing if we’re creating environments that offer big blocks of uninterrupted time for self-directed play and exploration, staff need to be able to do these things. We need to be able to be up, we need to be able to be moving. And we need to have the endurance to do that. And again, there are programs that struggle with this level of staff fitness. And another thing is these are good models for the kids as well. Another one is sensory abilities. I think this is the last one. I don’t think I’ve got many of these here. We need to have vision, oh, there’s one more. We need to have vision and hearing adequate for monitoring or responding to children. We need to be able to see and hear. That means, I mean, I don’t know what that means. But this is, again, pretty, it’s a pretty low bar that we should be able to reach. And then finally, fine motor skills. Staff should have the ability to effectively manipulate small objects because that’s part of the job as well. It’s something they have to do on a regular basis. And those are all very simple things. Now, I don’t know how we go about testing for these things. I myself personally think a staff Olympics every three to six months would be delightful where staff get out there and partake in events that replicate the activities they engage in during play and test their abilities in these areas where they get a, I don’t know, you gotta carry a 40-pound toddler mannequin across the playground in relay races. And you’ve gotta get up, sit down and get up off the floor 10 times in two minutes or whatever it is and staff compete. And then I think margaritas afterwards for everybody, I think is the standard there because you gotta celebrate your team building. I don’t know. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about. I thought I’d throw it out there in an episode. Maybe you like it, maybe you don’t. Maybe you have other standards of your own. I would like to hear about those and that’s something I’ll go into when we wrap up. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this kind of stuff. This is just kind of, you know, a lot of times this podcast is just stuff that has been in my head and then I spit it out here hoping somebody wants to discuss it with me. So if those physical standards or lack of them in your coworkers or your challenges and meeting them yourself or whatever it is around this topic, I’d like to hear about it. Another thing about this as well is generally people who are more physically fit and able are going to be less burnt out. Now, not always, but a lot of times for people exercise whether it’s strength training or endurance training, conditioning, reduce stress and burnout. And so that’s another side benefit for these things. So if you have thoughts, share them. I’d like to hear them. Amazon ID for this month. And again, I’ve got an Amazon link for a portal on the show notes and all over the Playvolution HQ website. If you use it to enter Amazon, the world of Amazon, then a little bit of anything you buy goes to support the show. Somebody was kind enough to use that link to buy one of these jobbies. Step two, pump and splash discovery, watery sensory activity pool thingy. And I think step two builds some very durable stuff. And you got the little pump there and the water wheels and the tippy thing. And I think this is a good way for like toddlers and stuff to play with water. And again, the water doesn’t get too deep. So it’s not really a safety concern. And I think that’s a good investment for a program. So if you’re looking at buying stuff like that for your program and you wanna support this podcast and the Playvolution HQ website, just shop through that Amazon portal. It

    13 min

  3. 14/07/2025

    PHQP_0028 Interoception And School Readiness

    In episode PHQP_0028 Interoception And School Readiness, Jeff discusses the interoceptive system and its importance in school readiness. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0028 Interoception And School Readiness Episode Notes Interoceptive System The Interoceptive System Simplified The Important Role Of Kinetic Chains In Early Learning PHQP_0027 Coordination 8 Sensory Systems That Drive Playful Learning The Benefits of Playful Aggression Show Notes Subscribe | Video Episodes or Audio Episodes Contact Jeeves The Intern | jeeves@playvolutionhq.com Contact Jeff | podcast@playvolutionhq.com Support The Show Via Amazon | Shop Jeff’s Amazon Associate link Support The Show With A Membership | Become a member Make A One-Time Contribution | Buy us a shot Share Content | Share photos and short videos of kids at play Visit | Playvolution HQ or Explorations Early Learning About | Jeff Training | Learn about upcoming online events or booking an event The Interoception And School Readiness Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I’m Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on with the show. So, I discovered something the other day. I, I, there we go. I discovered steak cut bacon. Now, look, listeners, if you knew about steak cut bacon and didn’t tell me about it, I’m, I’m very angry with you. If, if steak cut bacon is a new thing for you, you’ll be just as amazed as I was. I was doing my online shopping and I decided, hey, let’s get a little bit crazy and move away from our regular bacon selection and see what other kind of bacon opportunities the world has to offer us. I found steak cut bacon. A pound of this stuff is four slices. So, each slice is like, like half an inch thick. And we, we, we partook, me and, me and the wife, Tasha, partook of the steak cut bacon earlier today. And it’s delightful. So, what’s that got to do with anything? Well, the world is full of amazing stuff and we don’t know it all. And we should be open to, to checking things out and trying new things and, and looking for new things to try, I guess. And if you haven’t tried steak cut bacon, you’re in for a, it’s just, it’s just thick meat candy. Anyway, on with the show. Topic one and the only topic again for another episode, interoception and school readiness. So, the interoceptive system is a big part of school readiness, but it doesn’t get much attention. Early learning programs spend a lot of time talking about, I don’t know, knowing how to write your name and being able to, to name the colors and those kind of things. Those all seem, seem like school readiness things, but this is a very primordial, basic, simple school readiness thing that we often rush through in early learning programs and don’t pay much attention to. So the interoceptive system is a, one of the eight sensory systems we’ve talked to. We’ve mentioned it on previous episodes. It’s really about sensing the body’s inner signals. So we’ve got all of these sensory systems inside of our body that are sending messages to our brains. And this kind of encompasses all of those. So this is internal signals that we’re dealing with here and how to interpret the body’s interpret, how to interpret the body’s inner signals. And so it’s not only wearing them up and being aware of them, but interpreting them, figuring out what they mean. And we’ll get to that in a little bit more, more detail in a moment. So think for example, around your belly button, we can have a sensory experience in that six or eight inches around your belly button. And it might mean you need to eat because you’re hungry. And it might mean you’re feeling anxious or stressed. Maybe you need to relax. And it might mean you need to poop. And it might mean you need to pee. And it might mean you’re getting sick and you need to throw up. And those sensations are in the same area. And the internal signals are very similar. And we can pretty much learn to discriminate against between them and tell the difference between them. And you get to the point where you know, oh, I’ve got to go pee or, oh, I need a grilled cheese sandwich. And being able to make those determinations when you’re five, six years old and then heading off to kindergarten makes you a delight to have in the classroom and a happier student as well. It’s good for the teacher and it’s good for the student. The problem is learning to differentiate between those senses to make sense of them, to define them, to break them down takes practice. And a lot of times kids aren’t getting the practice they need in their early learning settings. Some other things interoceptive, the interoceptive system handles. Hunger, fullness, thirst. You feel that dryness in the throat or the mouth. Heartbeat. There’s a difference between your heartbeat when you’re sitting at the arts and crafts table, finger painting, or whether you’re outside being Batman and you feel the difference in your heartbeat. Bladder and bowel signals, like I mentioned a moment ago. Pain detection. Emotional cues. That’s that kind of internal emotional feel we have, whether it’s stress or anxiety, those kinds of things. We have those internal signals. Sometimes it’s like barbed wire and butterflies in the belly. Changes in our breathing. Changes in body temperature and fatigue and energy levels. And all those kinds of things are internally signaled and the information is sent to our brains and we are aware of them and can make use of them as we navigate the world. Interoceptive system develops through active play and exploration, which I know this is going to be a shock for anybody that’s listened to more than one episode of this podcast, but to help children be school-ready and to help them build their interoceptive systems, they need to play and explore. Children need big blocks of uninterrupted time for self-directed play and exploration in supportive environments. And if we give them those things, the wiring happens because that’s just how humans are built. We don’t need to sit down and do interoceptive lessons with groups of kids. Now, it might not hurt to have some conversations about those kind of interoceptive related things, either with groups or individuals in small groups or with individuals. Conversations about how you feel your heart pounding after running around in the playground or how you can tell you’re thirsty because your throat and your mouth get dry. Those kind of things. Having those conversations builds awareness. We don’t need to do a lot of lessening at kids. We just need to get them out there and get moving and building their bodies also builds the sensory system because movement sparks sensation. And that’s I mean, if you’re looking for a bumper sticker phrase about how we can support children’s sensory development, not just interoception, but all of the sensory systems, movement sparks sensation is not a bad idea for a bumper sticker along those lines because movement builds all of those sensory systems. It wires them up to the brain and helps us learn to understand them and integrate them into our decision making and activities almost seamlessly. Kids who don’t move don’t wire these systems and that’s where a lot of kids are struggling now because they’re very sedentary at home because they’re glued to a tablet or a video game and they’re not outside running around and playing with the neighbor kids or they’re very sedentary in their early learning settings. There’s lots of circle time and lots of sit down activities instead of the big body active movement that they need to develop these sensory systems. Another, it’s a little bit long for a bumper sticker, but less activity equals weaker connections. And that’s generally kind of true across the board for the sensory systems. If we don’t use them, they don’t connect to the brain and then the brain isn’t working as efficiently. The brain’s not getting the information it needs to navigate the world. And what we want for kids is for them to grow up and be able to navigate the world, to be able to survive and thrive in their culture. And so we need to move more, more play, more exploration, child-directed, child-led. Teachers want students who are able to read those signals, those internal signals. Teachers want students who know if they need to go to the bathroom or if they’re hungry or if they’re feeling sick because it makes the teacher’s job a lot easier when those things happen. And so this is why a well-developed interoceptive system is very important for school readiness. Strong interoception leads to happier teachers and students. Students are happier because they have more self-awareness. They are more independent when they understand those signals. They know when they need to go get a drink of water and they know when they need to sit down a little bit because they’re getting a little bit winded from running around being Batman or, you know, whatever it is. And so everybody wins if we in the early learning world spend a little bit more time on big blocks of uninterrupted time for self-directed play and exploration. Not only future teachers, but current teachers, you win also when kids are getting that activity and movement because you’re reaping the benefits of those strength and sensory systems as well. All right, so that’s enough of that. There’s some links related to things in the episode notes. Let’s wrap this thing up. Explorations are only sight changes. So there’s a little commercial for the stuff that I do. I guess I throw in here sometimes. I just spent a week updating the Playvolution HQ website. Playvolutionhq.com is where I do online trainings and where you can find information about booking me for in-person gigs. I pretty much do a training there every most, you know, three to four times a month. And then you can book

    14 min

  4. 07/07/2025

    PHQP_0027 Coordination

    In episode PHQP_0027 Coordination, Jeff discusses coordination. Spoiler Alert–kids need to play more. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0027 Coordination Episode Notes 8 Sensory Systems That Drive Playful Learning DIY | Sensory Play Ramps Hands Grasp Gently Poster Show Notes Subscribe | Video Episodes or Audio Episodes Contact Jeeves The Intern | jeeves@playvolutionhq.com Contact Jeff | podcast@playvolutionhq.com Support The Show Via Amazon | Shop Jeff’s Amazon Associate link Support The Show With A Membership | Become a member Make A One-Time Contribution | Buy us a shot Share Content | Share photos and short videos of kids at play Visit | Playvolution HQ or Explorations Early Learning About | Jeff Training | Learn about upcoming online events or booking an event The Coordination Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I’m Jeff Johnson, thanks for pushing play. On with the show. So, I talk more about coordination. Again, I’m trying to teach myself to play the guitar and I’m an old guy and I thought I was fairly coordinated. But when it comes to putting my fingers in the right place at the right time and making sure the left fingers are in the right place while the right fingers are in the right place while my heel is keeping beat, it’s very, very complicated. And it’s very, very frustrating. And I’m loving every moment of it. And it got me to thinking about children and coordination because over the last couple years, I’ve been talking to caregivers, you know, about play and all the other stuff we talk about in this show. And one thing that continues to come up is a lot of long-time caregivers, people who’ve been in the field for 15, 25, 35 years are reporting frustration with how much less coordinated the children are than they used to be. Somebody in Australia referred to it as kids that got floppy hands nowadays. And I think that’s a thing. And, you know, I think it comes from the sedentariness and the screen time and a lot of that. And a lot of the things we cover on the show would address it. But I just wanna spend a little bit of time talking again about coordination. So that’s our topic, coordination. So coordination is the ability to execute smooth, controlled movements. And it has a lot to do with proprioception, which we talked about in a previous episode. But coordination also has to do with the visual processes and muscle memory. And there’s a lot more going on than just proprioception there. And one of the ways we can, yeah, we’re realizing other sensory systems too. I forgot this slide was there. Vision is there, touch is there, the vestibular system is there. All of this stuff is working together. And for all of those things to work together, that’s vestibular, the sensory system, that’s four of the eight sensory systems at least working together all at once, is they need a lot of practice. And that’s what I’m experiencing with my learning guitar is that I’ve made improvements. But especially because I’m an old guy, I’ve got this old brain that doesn’t make new neural connections nearly as fast as if I was six months old. It’s taking a long time. So I can see those slow progressions, but what it takes is repetition over and over and over and over again. And that’s what kids need when they’re building their coordination and these sensory systems. So our coordination develops from the core out, from our center, and then the big muscles, and then finally out to our fingertips. And so one of the problems, and I’ve talked about this before, one of the problems, one of the roadblocks to this in a lot of early learning settings is kids aren’t engaging in enough big body activity. And if we want them to be able to sit still and keep their hands to themselves and manage a writing utensil, when they get to school, they need to be doing a lot more moving in their early learning settings than they’re doing nowadays. They need to be a lot less crisscross applesauce and a lot more rough and tumble play and superhero play and running and climbing and leaping and rolling, spinning, and all that fun stuff. So core outward, if you want to get fancy with it, it’s from the proximal to the distal, from the core outward. If you want to impress parents or your coworkers, you can talk about proximal to distal when it comes to coordination development. And this naturally develops, again, via play and exploration. Kids are wired to develop their coordination by doing the things that they’re naturally inclined to do. Kind of, because now when kids are growing up in sedentary lifestyles, you might have young children who aren’t inclined to run and jump and spin and flop and leap and rough and tumble and all of this because they’ve always been told no to those kinds of things. And so those instincts are kind of tamped down. And so for some of these kids, as adults, we really need to encourage this active engagement with the world that some kids may be missing out on because they’ve never seen it as an option. Again, this comes to those big blocks, I got blurry, big blocks of uninterrupted time for self-directed play and exploration. Pretty much everything in early learning comes back to that one sentence, that one concept, big blocks of uninterrupted time for self-directed play and exploration. And if we can give those to kids, the kids are gonna be more coordinated and maybe they’ll be better at learning to play the guitar when they get older. Early learning settings often slow the development of coordination because of the things we’ve talked about. And so we can talk about we’re trying to make kids school-ready, but what we’re doing instead is actively preventing it. And that needs to be taken into consideration. Anything we can do to get kids moving more is going to benefit them. Anything we’re doing to prohibit and restrict and prevent their active movement and engagement with the world is a hindrance to their school readiness and their life readiness. We’re limiting natural human movement patterns. And that’s what rough and tumble play is. That’s what kids climbing is. Those are natural human movement patterns. And the way we build coordination and wire all of those sensory systems that are related to sense of touch, the proprioceptive, the vestibular, and visual primarily in this case, the more we move, the more we develop them. And we’re also restricting access to small bits and pieces. This is another part of this because there’s that core stuff, that proximal development where we need to be doing lots of big movements. But there’s also the way we get those fine motor skills developed is by engaging with little bits and pieces. And a lot of times programs are so worried about kids choking. And I mean, that’s something we should be concerned about. But we take it to these extremes where young children never get to touch tiny little bits and pieces, and they need to. Because the way we learn to manipulate tiny little bits and pieces is to be exposed to them, which means that we have to have contact with them. And if we are so worried that a child is going to choke and die every time they come into contact with a tiny little bit or a tiny little piece, we are really doing them a disservice. And so our job needs to be, yes, ensure safety, but also make sure kids have access to little bits and pieces. And that just means we need to supervise. That means we be aware of their development. And kids go through that stage where they mouth everything. One of the ways they get beyond mouthing everything as a sensory experience is to have more opportunity to develop their sense of touch because the mouthing is a way to understand the feel and texture of things before the other tactile senses are totally weired up. So exposure helps kids move beyond that, and that’s something else we can be working on. So bits and pieces, little bits and pieces with appropriate supervision are a piece of developing coordination. And again, more play is the answer because in early learning, more play is just about always the answer. So let’s wrap up this episode. What do we got going on? I guess the takeaway is more fiddling, more little bits and pieces to crumble around with. I see kids at the beach. I saw Tasha a couple of weeks ago. She was almost to the point where she’s trying to pick up individual pieces of sand. That’s how interested she was in this. And of course, that wasn’t working. She was getting bigger bits. But kids, they’re wired to fiddle. They’re wired to touch. They’re wired to engage. And instead of preventing it, we need to support it as active and appropriate human movement patterns, natural human movement patterns. So fiddle more. Amazon Idea for this month, it’s these things. Somebody used the Amazon link. It’s in the show notes and it supports the Playvolution HQ site and this podcast to buy a pack of these little things, little clips and they’re lanyard making kits, but there’s so much. If you’ve got a tinkering space and you’re looking at more fiddling opportunities for kids, there’s all kinds of fun things kids could create with this stuff and a little bit of string and a little bit of tape and a little bit of glue and a little bit of time and space and opportunity. So something to check out and you can use that Amazon link if you wanna support the show. It’s much appreciated. Another thing you can do is you can share the stuff you like. You might not like everything, but you might stumble across something that you find valuable either in this podcast or on the Playvolution HQ site and pass it along to somebody who might enjoy it. I’d appreciate that. Next week, we’re gonna be talking about interoception and score readiness. Interoception, the sense that covers kind of what we’re feeling inside. It’s kind of one of my favorites and

    12 min

  5. 30/06/2025

    PHQP_0026 Avoiding Pediatric Occupational Therapy

    In PHQP_0026 Avoiding Pediatric Occupational Therapy, Jeff unpacks why more preschool play could help avoid school-age pediatric occupational therapy. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0026 Avoiding Pediatric Occupational Therapy Episode Notes Balanced And Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children Show Notes Subscribe | Video Episodes or Audio Episodes Contact Jeeves The Intern | jeeves@playvolutionhq.com Contact Jeff | podcast@playvolutionhq.com Support The Show Via Amazon | Shop Jeff’s Amazon Associate link Support The Show With A Membership | Become a member Make A One-Time Contribution | Buy us a shot Share Content | Share photos and short videos of kids at play Visit | Playvolution HQ or Explorations Early Learning About | Jeff Training | Learn about upcoming online events or booking an event The Avoiding Pediatric Occupational Therapy Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ Podcast. I’m Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on with the show. So, update on something I saw. So, episodes and episodes ago I reported on seeing something called the, I called the water punch game, the water bottle punch game. So, kids were, they had a partially full bottle of water and they were just holding it up and dropping it and punching it. And that went on, I saw a bunch of kids playing it and there were only a couple kids playing it. And then over the last couple months, I guess it’s been, there’s this one kid I see and this seems to be his go-to hanging out when his friends aren’t really able to play, thing to do outside. And he’s, he’s really evolved as a player of this game or evolved the game, I guess. Now it’s, it’s multiple, multiple strikes on the bottle before it hits the ground. So, he’ll, he’ll toss it up the air, up in the air and then he’ll bat it up and then it’ll be coming down and he’ll bat it with an elbow and then maybe get it with a knee and then maybe his heel and then he’ll punch it farther away from him. So, it’ll be four or five strikes before the bottle hits the gun. It’s kind of like, like, like dribbling a soccer ball. And, and it’s, it’s really great. And this kind of relates back to the proprioception episode we did a little bit ago. This kid has a wonderful awareness of where his body parts are in space in relation to his other body parts, as well of, as well as where other things in the environment are in space. So, it’s kind of neat to see that, that game evolve and change over, over time. On with the podcast, topic one, only topic for, for this episode is avoiding pediatric occupational therapy. So, what I’m talking about here is not avoiding it for those who need it. I’m talking about preventing the need for it, I guess is what I’m talking about. And maybe I could have worded the title different, but you know, it is what it is. So, occupation, pediatric occupational therapy is a wonderful thing and very valuable for kids who need it. And it would be nice if we lived in a world where fewer kids needed it. And over the, over the last couple of decades, there’s been a huge uptick in the number of kids that are needing, needing this kind of, kind of therapy, this kind of assistance. Human children have never been more sedentary than they are now in 2025, something I say just about every episode. And that has, has made this uptick in pediatric occupational therapy necessary. When kids don’t move, they don’t build the physical skills that they need, the sensory systems they need don’t get wired with their brains, and they have a hard time living in their bodies in the world. And that’s basically what pediatric occupational therapy does, is it helps kids who are having a hard time navigating their bodies, navigate their bodies and the world a little bit better. But that’s also what, what play does. Play is the evolutionary strategy for giving us all of those skills. And then we end up with kids who lack those skills, and then we have these therapeutic settings to, to help them catch up. But again, it’d be nice if we could avoid, avoid the therapeutic settings altogether. One of the reasons for this uptick is also more screen times, because we are usually sedentary when we are in front of our screens. And so shoving young children in front of screens has really done them a developmental disservice. And look, I’m, I’m pro screen. I, there are a lot of valuable things that can come from screens, but I think in the early years, less is probably, is probably better. Speaking of less, another, another reason for this uptick in the need for pediatric occupational therapy is that there’s less play going on. Just across the board, kids are playing less. There’s less time for it at home. There’s less time for it in early learning settings. And so it’s not happening. And again, play is an evolutionary strategy for developing a lot of human skills. And so when it doesn’t take place, that learning doesn’t take place. That development doesn’t take place. This play crisis we’re living in hinders child development. And make no doubt about it. We are, we are experiencing a play crisis in this world, and it, it seems to continue to get worse instead of better. Young human children and human adults and middle-aged, middle-aged children. Look, all of us should probably be playing more. And, and that’s not, not happening. And that, that hinders children’s development. It’s not good for us old people not to play, but it’s really a problem for young children. Pediatric OT remedies developmental delays through playful interventions. That’s one of its jobs. A lot of play therapists will actually have kids do the things in their therapy sessions that they weren’t doing when they were younger in their early learning settings. And so it may be sensory play. It may be big body active play, rolling, climbing, jumping, flipping, spinning. And the problem with, well, it’s not a problem that it happens. It’s good that it happens because then the kids get that, the, the benefit of it. But it preemptively, we could be allowing those activities in our early learning settings and in children’s home lives. And then we wouldn’t need the therapy. That’s the takeaway I’m going to keep repeating, I guess, for this episode. Pediatric occupational therapy is also expensive because you’ve got to be able to pay the therapist. You’ve got to be able to have probably a, a, a room set up with the proper equipment, the proper setting, or being often transportation is going on back and forth. There’s a time expense for not only the therapist, but for other adults in, in getting the kid back and forth between, between the rest of their life and the therapy session. And so even if this is taking place in a school session, maybe, maybe a, a, a session or two a week with a OT, that’s thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars per child per school year that that’s costing that, that most of those kids could have, could have avoided if they would have had more opportunity to play in the early years. And I say, I say most, and maybe it’s not, it’s many. If it’s not most, it’s absolutely surely many. Kids could have avoided this. And, and look, play isn’t the answer for all kids all of the time when it comes to preventing or avoiding occupational therapy. But for, for many kids, it would be the right answer. And again, we mentioned, I mentioned it pulls kids from other activities. It can carry a social stigma as well because they, they, they get looked at as, as an other, because they’re getting pulled away. Maybe, maybe not as much now in 2025 as it would have been back when I was a kid in the seventies when, when kids were really not being pulled out of classrooms for much, maybe because it’s happening more often. It’s less of a stigma now, but that still carries a little bit of that with us. And, and so the takeaway is more preschool play reduces the need for school age occupational therapy. And all we need to do is create environments where kids have that opportunity, that opportunity to play, to move their bodies the way they’re, they’re naturally inclined to want to move their bodies for most kids. Now, some kids for, for whatever reason, they, they, they don’t, they don’t develop, they don’t have an interest in these things. And so they end up having, having the need for the OT, but most, like I said, most kids, most of the time, or many kids, much of the time are going to benefit or be able to avoid it if we give them more play. OT is a vital tool, but best prevented through play when possible. I think that’s the takeaway. Check out the book, Bounce and Barefoot, by the way, author Angela Hanscom is a pediatric occupational therapist. And this is baby, basically one of the premises of the book is children are lacking in play. And so they’re needing more therapy. And, and her, her book takes, it’s a wonderful, wonderful read and very valuable book that digs into this topic. And the, the environments, many early learning settings create for kids that are, that are so actively pushing school readiness are actually preventing school readiness because they’re not allowing kids to develop these sensory systems and, and body skills that are so necessary for navigating life. And that’s not, that’s not intentional, but our system has evolved to the point where, where we’re thinking about, we’re, we’re, we’re pushing kids towards academic things when we should be focusing more on the physiological things. And, and that causes this, this need for, for this additional therapy later on in life. And again, best to be avoided, right? Let’s wrap this up. Takeaway for this week is more play. Takeaway for this one episode, every episode of this show is, is more play for the kids and adults, more play

    12 min

  6. 23/06/2025

    PHQP_0025 Instead of NO

    In PHQP_0025 Instead of NO, Jeff discusses the value of following up a “No” with a “But” in order to better support playful learning. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0025 Instead of NO Episode Notes No links for this episode. Show Notes Subscribe | Video Episodes or Audio Episodes Contact Jeeves The Intern | jeeves@playvolutionhq.com Contact Jeff | podcast@playvolutionhq.com Support The Show Via Amazon | Shop Jeff’s Amazon Associate link Support The Show With A Membership | Become a member Make A One-Time Contribution | Buy us a shot Share Content | Share photos and short videos of kids at play Visit | Playvolution HQ or Explorations Early Learning About | Jeff Training | Learn about upcoming online events or booking an event The Instead of NO Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ Podcast, I’m Jeff Johnson, thanks for pushing play, I’m with the show. So I was on a walk the other day and I ran across an Easter game, kids were playing a game of dodge croc. This is, you can imagine, dodge ball using a croc shoe, you know, those really ugly shoes, instead of a ball. Nobody wanted to run home and get a ball, so somebody kicked off their shoes and they were playing with the croc. And they were using a pinkish, purplish colored croc, I think crocs of any color will work if you want to play dodge croc. But I thought this was ingenious, it goes to show how creative kids are, how versatile loose parts are, and how kids are wired to make do. We don’t need a lot of fancy toys to make play happen, we just need space and an environment and interest and kids will come up with all kinds of things for the props necessary to make their play work. When I do write up the dodge ball post for the Playvolution HQ collection of classic kids games, I will make sure to include dodge croc in there as a game variation. What are we going to get into next? Well, we’ve got one topic for this week, and that is no but. This kind of is related to the dodge croc, right? Anybody got a ball so we can play dodge ball? No but, I do have this croc, and that’s the way they move forward. I think no but is a much better option when it comes to dealing with activities kids are choosing than no, because often times for adults we get in this habit of saying no and just putting things to a complete stop when kids are doing things that we don’t approve of. Now, absolutely there are times when we need kids to stop what they’re doing. It’s okay, I mean I’m not saying never say no to kids, what I am saying is much of the time when it comes to supervising and keeping play safe and promoting learning, we can opt for something less than no, and I think no but is a good variation there, because it’s easy for no to become the default response. Along those lines, my experience is also, since I do a lot of training and talking about caregiver burnout, saying no all day, no, no you can’t do that, no you can’t do this, no you can’t do this, I can’t have you, really has an impact on our mindset, and we start taking on the negative mindset of that no, and one of the strategies for reducing burnout just a little bit for caregivers is to create an environment where you’re not saying no as much, because it truly does have an impact on your mindset. Maybe that’ll be a future episode. So instead of no, we can start going with no but, and that curtails the children’s activity and learning, just like no does, but it offers another option, and that’s where it becomes valuable. So instead of shutting down the activity completely, it offers them a way to move forward with it with slight changes. And look, this is basically redirection, right? And I think it’s more thoughtful if we think about it in these terms of looking for ways to support the thing, because oftentimes just basic redirection is they redirect, the child is redirected 180 degrees from what they are already doing, and what we’re talking about here is making minor changes to what they’re already doing so they can keep doing some version of it. I think that’s the difference between basic redirection and no but. Yes, might be impossible, impractical, or inconvenient. That just happens. There are going to be, like I said, there are going to be those times where we do absolutely have to say no to kids, and no but could be that alternative. No but provides options and choice and a little bit more power and control for the kids instead of being redirected to something that may be 180 degrees away from what they wanted to be doing in the first place. And so thinking about no buts can be valuable. Throwing, for example, if you have a kid in the block area who’s got a large hardwood maple block that they are repeatedly throwing across the block area because they are interested in trajectory schema play, which is an interest in how things move through space, and you have other people in the block area with delicate human skin, and you’ve got a window in the block area with delicate glass, a hardwood block flying through that space over and over and over again is something you probably want to stop. But instead of having that kid stop throwing the block and leave the block area and redirecting them to the art easel, no but would have you redirect them to throwing something different. Jessica, I can’t have you throwing blocks, but here’s something else you can throw. And then you redirect that child to a corner in the room where you’ve got a basket full of things that are safe to throw inside around people or outside to a place on the playground where you’ve set up a space where kids can throw heavier stuff because you’ve set things up in your classroom where there is a space or your playground where there’s space for throwing at the far end of the playground. You can throw things here because there aren’t people here and making throwing bigger, heavier stuff okay in that area. There are ways to make that throwing acceptable without shutting it down completely. So no just takes away the throwing completely and the kid gets sent to the book area or the easel or maybe time out and the no but takes that activity and saves the essence of it and redirects it to someplace else. Most kids most of the time are going to be cool with this because they’re able to keep doing the thing they wanted to do and that’s the important part. Not all kids all of the time. There are going to be kids that rebel against it or they’re going to be kids that you didn’t suss out correctly what they were doing because their interest in throwing that block might not be about throwing the block and an interest in trajectory schema. They might have been interested in annoying their playmates or they might have been interested in annoying you and so redirecting with throwing someplace else wouldn’t allow them to follow that and so it doesn’t work all the time and I don’t know how you would redirect somebody from annoying somebody to annoying somebody. Go be annoying to Beth over there on the other side of the room. I don’t think that would work. That might be one of those times where we need to do a 180 degree redirection or just simply say no to those kind of things I guess but we’re getting off track. Play fighting is another example. In the last episode, we talked about proprioception and play fighting is a valuable, valuable activity for building proprioception but it gets shut down in a lot of programs completely. Zero tolerance for it, right? But if you take a no but approach, you confine it to a certain space or you curtail the way that it happens. Maybe we have to play fight on our knees because you think that’s going to lead to fewer injuries or maybe we have to be on the tumbling mats or whatever it is. You have the constraints you put on the play fighting so that some version of play fighting can still happen but you’re not shutting it down completely and then the kids get to engage in that activity that they’re interested in. Climbing is another one. If kids like to climb, kids need to climb, toddlers are very interested in climbing and they’re skilled at it. A lot of times, toddler climbing gets shut down because we worry about safety but it also helps build proprioception and all the other sensory systems and so we need to find ways to support it. I can’t have you climbing, no, you can’t climb the bookcase but yes, you can climb over here on this climbing structure. No climbing the bookcase but you can climb over here. Those kind of things. So thinking about no but as a tool for redirecting kids’ behavior into something that makes you feel a little bit more comfortable with it and also supports their needs to engage in a specific type of activity at a specific time. No but can also be a step towards more yeses in your classroom. You can think of it as a midpoint. Instead of going from no to yeses for things, you can use it as a halfway point, as a way station on your journey from lots of no’s to more yeses. That doesn’t look like the way yeses should be spelled but that bothers me. But that’s a whole other episode, I guess, I don’t know what that would be called. So sensory play is something that we can maybe say yes more to. My brain froze for a minute. There’s something going on in the corner of my eye that’s distracting me. Sensory play is something that we say no to a lot, that we could say yes to more. But maybe no but would be a step towards that. Instead of kids getting totally messy, maybe you get a little bit more friendly with mess with a no but. Roaming sand is one that we used to have a problem with. In our program, I thought I had to be the sand cop. I don’t know if I’ve talked about it on this podcast before. I know I’ve talked about it on other podcasts. We used to have the sand stays in the sandbox rule. And then we started letting the sand roam because I figured out

    15 min

  7. 16/06/2025

    PHQP_0024 Proprioception And School Readiness

    In PHQP_0024 Proprioception And School Readiness, Jeff explores proprioception, the body’s ability to sense its position and movement, and its critical role in preparing young children for school. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0024 Proprioception And School Readiness Episode Notes Proprioceptive System Balanced And Barefoot | Quote 02043 The Important Role Of Kinetic Chains In Early Learning 5 Simple Ways to Support “Heavy Work” Balanced And Barefoot | Quote 02289 Balanced And Barefoot | Quote 02544 Balanced And Barefoot | Quote 02555 Heavy Work Simplified Balanced And Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children Show Notes Subscribe | Video Episodes or Audio Episodes Contact Jeeves The Intern | jeeves@playvolutionhq.com Contact Jeff | podcast@playvolutionhq.com Support The Show Via Amazon | Shop Jeff’s Amazon Associate link Support The Show With A Membership | Become a member Make A One-Time Contribution | Buy us a shot Share Content | Share photos and short videos of kids at play Visit | Playvolution HQ or Explorations Early Learning About | Jeff Training | Learn about upcoming online events or booking an event The Proprioception And School Readiness Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I’m Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on with the show. So, uh, I, uh, if you listen to the show, I’ve been, I’ve been, I talked about this before. I decided I was going to learn to play the guitar. That’s going to be my new scary thing. And a little bit of an update. I’ve started developing finger calluses. You can’t see them, but I can feel the skin getting thicker on my, on my fingers because of the, uh, the pain of, of the guitar strings. And that’s, that’s one of the amazing things about our bodies. Our bodies are adaptive. And so after a while, it’s not going to be so painful to play. But the other big thing I’ve found is, uh, related to the topic for the day, proprioception. I am, I was amazed at how poor my proprioception is in relation to the skills you need to learn how to play the guitar because, um, well, we’ll get into proprioception in a little bit, but it’s about awareness of, of your body’s position in relation to other parts of your body in part. And I’ve got to be able to put my left index finger and my left, left middle finger, my left pinky, all in specific places. Well, my heel is tapping. Well, my right thumb is strumming in the right direction and it’s, it’s a lot. And, and so one of the, one of the struggles for learning something like this, especially when you’re, you’re old, like I am, is it literally takes rewiring the brain to build these, these new skills that, that come naturally when we’re in kids. And that’s why for our topic today, I wanted to get into, um, proprioception and school readiness because maybe if I would have been more proprioceptively prepared in kindergarten, I’d be a better guitar learner now. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but something we’re thinking about. So I wanted to dig into proprioception and its relation to school readiness because, you know, we talk about school readiness in the early learning field a lot, and it’s about ABCs and blocks and knowing how to write your name and, and things like that. But a big part of it is having your body physically ready to do the job of going to school. And a lot of kids are heading off to school with bodies that are, are not ready. And part of it is the way we handle programming in early learning settings. And part of it probably has to do with, uh, with other things like, uh, you know, how, how human children have never been more sedentary than they are right now in 2025. Um, and so really proprioception is, is a, is a big part about body awareness. And so let’s get into a little bit of that. Um, part of it is being aware of where body parts are in relation to other body parts. Now for just walking around, your brain needs to be aware of where your left heel is and where your right toes are and where your left elbow is and where your right elbow is, and the position of your head and the position of your torso and all of this. Your body, your brain has to be aware of, of all of those things to coordinate things like walking. For me, I’m struggling with the guitar. It’s, it’s the, the awareness of where individual fingers are in relation to other individual fingers. And this is, this is really important for a lot of things. Like I say, everything from walking to learning to play the guitar to, you know, learning how to hold a writing utensil and writing your name or being able to sit still or being able to sit in a chair for long periods of time. Uh, and so, or to be able to stack those blocks that apparently it’s important to be able to stack one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten blocks on top of each other. The awareness of where your body parts are in, in making that happen. The awareness of where your body parts are in just moving around a classroom and not bumping into people and not knocking things over. All very important and all don’t get a lot of attention. Um, it’s also about spatial awareness. Not only the awareness of where your body parts are in relation to each other, but where your body parts are in relation to the other things in the space. Uh, if you’re navigating a preschool classroom, it’s knowing where the block tower your friend is making is and knowing where the, the easel is and, and knowing that you got to step up a little bit more because you’re going from the tile floor up onto a rug. Um, this is all very complicated stuff for our bodies. Not complicated in terms of, of not being able to do them, but complicated in there’s a lot of moving parts in making those things work. And the sensory system, the proprioceptive system needs to be well developed to be able to navigate and understand spatial awareness. And so you can also think about proprioception as, as, um, a foundational numeracy skill because spatial awareness is part of learning mathematics to some extent. And so having a well honed proprioceptive system is going to make you more able when it comes to learning geometry, for example. Um, beyond that proprioception deals with where body parts are in relation to ship the things around you. That’s what that spatial awareness is. And, and so if we take those two, the two big ones, where body parts are in relation to other body parts and where body parts are in relation to the things around them, that’s a, that’s a lot of work for the sense of proprioception to be doing. Um, I’m amazed this one isn’t, isn’t taught in school. We learned the five basic, uh, senses that we, we talk about in, in, you know, what do we learn them in third or fourth grade, the sense of touch, the sense of taste, the sense of hearing, sense of smell, and the sense of sight. Um, and, and we don’t, we, we leave off, um, proprioception and the vestibular system and the interoceptive system. These are, these are important and we should pay more attention to them. Um, proprioception also weighers in an awareness of joint load. And so that’s how much, how much pressure, how much stress is being put on different joints, the muscles in your wrist, for example, how much pressure is being put on the joints when you’re holding your pencil, but also when you’re carrying a heavy bucket of sand, the, the, the pressure put on your, on your elbows and knees as you’re, as you’re carrying something heavy, those kinds of things. And that joint load is also, is valuable information in us navigating the world around us, moving in space. And, and so it’s very important that we have that skill developed. And then also grip force, because we were putting pressure on our, on our joints, but there’s how much pressure we use when we grip, grip something. Cause you use a different amount of pressure when you grip a pen, um, or a baby kitten or a bucket of sand. The bucket of sand, you’re going to use a much tighter grip than you’re going to use with your pen or, or a baby kitten, hopefully. And being able to differentiate, uh, that wide spectrum of grip force is, is something you learn by doing. And so we learn to grip things gently, to handle things gently by, by handling things. And it’s not, it’s not something that happens any other way. We don’t just wake up one morning and have, have a good understanding about our grip force. It’s something that just gets developed as we, as we navigate the world. And if you’re, you’re sitting still a lot, you’re not navigating the world. Uh, the proprioceptive system also plays a role in balance and stability. So balance and stability are mostly a vestibular thing, which we’ll get into in a future episode, but there’s also a, they play a part there because, um, it’s that alignment and awareness where the body parts are do play a role in, in balance. Because if I’m standing on my left foot and my right arm is up in the air, it, it becomes a body awareness thing as far as my balance goes. And so balance and stability are part of the proprioceptive system as well. And again, these systems are all wired together because the, the awareness of where our bodies are isn’t, where our bodies are in space is a vestibular thing, but there’s also a lot of vision going there. For example, our, our vestibular system is easier to build on the parts of our body we can see. It’s easier for me, it’s, it’s easier for me to figure out where my fingers go on the guitar strings because I can, I can see them if I, if I look at them. If that had, if I had learned that behind me, it, it’d be a lot, a lot more challenging, which is why learning how to play the guitar up over my head is going to be a real challenge when I get to that. But, but boy, once I have my, my l

    17 min

  8. 09/06/2025

    PHQP_0023 Fit For Care

    In episode PHQP_0023 Fit For Care, Jeff examines why early learning programs should consider adopting staff fitness standards, as well as making accommodations for staff who are unable to meet such standards when necessary. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0023 Fit For Care Episode Notes No special notes for this one. Show Notes Subscribe | Video Episodes or Audio Episodes Contact Jeeves The Intern | jeeves@playvolutionhq.com Contact Jeff | podcast@playvolutionhq.com Support The Show Via Amazon | Shop Jeff’s Amazon Associate link Support The Show With A Membership | Become a member Make A One-Time Contribution | Buy us a shot Share Content | Share photos and short videos of kids at play Visit | Playvolution HQ or Explorations Early Learning About | Jeff Training | Learn about upcoming online events or booking an event The Fit For Care Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ Podcast. I’m Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on with the show. So, a little update, a couple, a handful, I don’t know, maybe a dozen episodes back, I was talking about a kid playing at taking the garbage out, doing all kinds of spins and twists and flips with the garbage bag. My wife, Tash, reported the other day that she saw an adult male doing kind of the same thing. He was doing curls with the garbage bag, one hand and then the other, as he walked it out to the trash receptacle from the house. So, I like to see that it’s a, at least a multi-generational activity, that we humans find ways to entertain ourselves, even with mundane chores like hauling out the trash. So, topic, the only one for this episode, is caregiver fitness standards. I think a lot of people underestimate the physical demands of working in early learning programs. Now, in the burnout work that I do, I talk a lot about the emotional labor that we do, dealing with the emotions and feelings of people that we interact with. But there’s also a lot of physical labor, if we’re going to do this work. There’s hefting and toting of kids up and down off of changing tables, and there’s moving of equipment, and there’s hopefully running and chasing around with kids outside and inside, and getting our hearts pounding. And then maybe in emergency situations, there are things we need to do, and that requires a certain level of physical fitness. And I don’t know any kinder way to say this, but some early learning staff are not physically fit for the job of working in early learning. They’re incapable of meeting all of those physical demands, and to some extent, that’s okay. This is a sensitive topic because of that, but look, accommodations and inclusion are really important around this topic. I’ve met over my 30-ish years working the field a number of caregivers who would fall short of the physical requirements for doing the job for one reason or another, and who are incredibly gifted in other areas of the work that I would want them not in the field. So I think for many people, accommodations can be made, and we want to include people in this profession with differing abilities. And we do need some level of fitness for probably the majority of staff in the majority of programs for a number of reasons that we’ll get into. So I’m not trying to be a jerk talking about this topic, and I don’t want to exclude or forbid people from working in the field because they physically can’t do certain things, but I think it’s something we need to discuss. Sedentary adults encourage sedentary kids for one thing. I’ve said it many times, we live in a world where human children have never been more sedentary than they are right now in 2025. And if we want kids to be moving more, it’s probably a good idea to surround them with adults who are moving more. And so programmatically, having more physically active, physically capable, physically interested adults is probably a good idea, just from a curriculum standpoint. If we want kids to move, we need them to be around adults who can and do move. There’s also a relationship here to burnout, because over the years, I’ve written a couple books and done a lot of speaking and thinking about burnout in this profession. And I’ve noticed this kind of burnout fitness spiral, and it tends to happen to people because when you work in this profession, you do that emotional labor, and you start burning out. Burnout puts blinders on you, and you get kind of this narrow focus, and you burn up a lot of emotional energy. And so a lot of times, the way we try to deal with that is we get home, and we want to just decompress at the end of the day. So we flop down on the couch, and we turn on Netflix, and we eat a bag of Doritos. Or we do other things that are not necessarily good for us. And so my experience in talking to people, and my own experience, is that we fall out of any fitness levels we might have had as we spend time in this profession, and burnout takes over. I’m an example. In the last few years of my work as a center director, when I’d been burning out for three-plus years probably, I was in the worst physical shape of my life in my early 30s, because I was just putting so much emotionally into the job that taking care of myself physically wasn’t really on my radar. And my experience is that happens to a lot of people in this profession who start experiencing burnout. And so not only do some people come into this work lacking the fitness level we might want for the work, but this work can also, I guess, drag you in a direction that makes you less likely to pay attention to those. On the counterside of that, it’s one of the best things we can do to counteract burnout is to, in our own lives, be more physically active. Implementing exercise programs, whether you’re getting stronger physically, lifting weights, or whether you’re doing cardio or whatever it is, moving your body more, getting in better physical condition has an impact on your emotional state as well, your emotional and mental state. So that plays a part of it. And so I think that all ties into the physical fitness standards of this profession. And the truth is, agreed-upon standards don’t really exist for what the physical abilities should be for people working in the early learning profession. Now there’s no limit to the number of documents that claim to tell you what we should be doing in our programs. We’ve got accreditation programs, we’ve got quality rating scales, we’ve got state regulations, and most of those are telling us about where we should be as people and what we should be doing. And what the curriculum should be and what our medication administration process should be and all of that about how to do the job. But no place in most of those documents do they spell out the physical demands of the work. And so because there aren’t any standards out there, it’s kind of hard for programs to know what to require, what to demand, what to expect, what to encourage from their employees. And so I think that’s a piece of the problem as well. So demands of the job. And I mean this is basic stuff. There is a certain strength level you need to have to do this job well. Because you do need to lift things up and put things down and carry things and move things, and that requires a certain level of strength. There’s mobility and flexibility. We need to be able to bend and move our bodies in certain ways. It’s important if you are an infant caregiver or a toddler caregiver to be able to get up and down off of the floor. Because not only are you moving kids up and down, you’re picking toys up and down and equipment up and down and you’re cleaning and all that kind of stuff. If you are physically unable to do that, it’s hard to do infant-toddler care well. With school-agers and preschoolers, it’s the same thing. There’s lots of up-to-down and moving and it’s moving in different ways, but it’s the same high demand that we have in the infant-toddler rooms. We’re playing games with the kids, we’re moving equipment, we’re setting up equipment, we’re cleaning and we’re doing all that kind of stuff. So there is a certain level of mobility and flexibility that’s required for this work. And there’s also endurance, because not only do we need the strength and the mobility and flexibility, but we also need to be able to do those things over and over and over throughout the course of a day, throughout the course of a week. The strength requirements aren’t a one-and-done kind of situation on a daily basis. There’s multiple things you need to do. So there is a certain physical demand to this work. And again, we don’t spend enough time probably thinking or talking about it. And so why is this important? Well, I think the big one is emergency response. In an emergency situation, a fire, a building intruder, an injury on the far side of the playground, there are going to be some physical demands of the caregivers. And if, say you’ve got to evacuate a building because of a fire, and if a certain percentage of your staff aren’t physically able to move kids through the building in a timely, speedy manner to get them out, you’re going to have a problem. Now, we can probably accommodate a couple people who aren’t as mobile and aren’t as quick as others. But at some point, there is a point where a lot of people are in danger if there aren’t enough staff who can physically do the job of evacuating that building. And that should be a concern. That’s something programs should think about. Another thing is hazard mitigation. Now, I’ve talked a lot on this podcast about the fact that risk isn’t something we should be worried about in terms of keeping kids safe. Risk is something we should actually encourage. What we should focus on when it comes to safety is hazard mitigation, which is helping kids see and predict things that may cause harm. And so lack

    15 min

  9. 02/06/2025

    PHQP_0022 Reliability And Validity Testing

    In PHQP 0022 Reliability And Validity Testing, Jeff reflects on the long, unstructured summer vacations of his childhood, contrasting them with today’s shorter, adult-scheduled breaks that limit children’s freedom to self-regulate and pursue their interests. Then, he critiques the lack of reliability and validity testing in early learning accreditation and quality rating programs. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0022 Reliability And Validity Testing Episode Notes No notes for this one! Show Notes Subscribe | Video Episodes or Audio Episodes Contact Jeeves The Intern | jeeves@playvolutionhq.com Contact Jeff | podcast@playvolutionhq.com Support The Show Via Amazon | Shop Jeff’s Amazon Associate link Support The Show With A Membership | Become a member Make A One-Time Contribution | Buy us a shot Share Content | Share photos and short videos of kids at play Visit | Playvolution HQ or Explorations Early Learning About | Jeff Training | Learn about upcoming online events or booking an event The Reliability And Validity Testing Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I’m Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on with the show. So, recently, coming back from Minnesota where I did a live weekend training, I had a great conversation with an Uber guy. We were about the same age and we got talking about summertime back when we were kids and going to the drive-in movies and jumping our big wheels off of things and fireflies and adults not really worrying about us and letting us play and have a good time and how that wasn’t always perfect. It was often wonderful playing outside till the streetlights came on, all of that kind of stuff, and it was a nice chance to reminisce with a peer, which got me thinking about topic one for this episode of a two-topic episode. A couple weeks after that, just a couple days ago now, I run into a kid. He comes over to say hi to Gigi, my pup, when we’re out on a walk and I say, hey, I hear you. Yesterday was the last day of school. He looks at me like I’m an idiot and he says, no, I have to keep going back until I’m almost an adult. He’s not off of school. He’s just on a short break until he’s got to go back and then go back and then go back until he’s almost an adult. That kind of struck me as funny because back in the day, back when me and that Uber driver were kids, summer vacations seemed to last forever. I dug into this a little bit and it turns out that total school days hasn’t changed much since the 50s and maybe even earlier, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. It ends up being around 180 days of school and every state and every district’s got their own thing, but that seems to be about the average across the U.S. What has changed is how those days are disbursed. We used to have a big block of time off during the summer, back in the day. It was almost from the end of May, beginning of June, to the end of August. Now it is often much, much shorter than that. The days off hasn’t changed. They disperse them different because there’s more days off during the school year for teacher work days and slightly longer spring breaks and those kind of things. Maybe those things are good, but what those things are mostly for is to make things more convenient for adults. Look, I get that, but what’s missing is those short summer vacations do kids a disservice because we don’t have the time to decompress and be away from adults and follow their own interests and have that freedom that we had back in the day. That’s something that’s missing because one of the troubling things about modern childhood is kids are always under the thumb of somebody else’s schedule and somebody else’s timeline. It’s really hard to learn how to self-regulate and know your own mind and follow your own interests when somebody’s always shuffling you from this activity to that activity. Longer summers would do a lot for kids. Of course, that’s not going to happen. On topic two, that was kind of depressing, and this topic is going to be depressing too, if you want to take it that way. It gets in my head every once in a while. I got to think about reliability and validity testing a couple weeks ago, and I decided we needed to do an episode about it because a lot of times in early learning settings, we don’t think about this. Reliability and validity testing is a thing. Accreditation programs and quality rating systems should take advantage of this thing, but it turns out that many to most don’t. That should be a problem for the people that are living under those standards. Let’s dig into that a little bit. My brain shut off there for a second. Excuse me. Reliability and validity testing validates the tool’s quality. If accreditation and quality rating systems are asking caregivers to be parts of those programs and to see them as valuable and to trust the ratings they dish out, those same caregivers should be able to see those tools as valid in measuring quality or whatever else they’re attempting to measure. Reliability and validity testing is conducted by an independent third party, so the organization that sponsors the quality rating system or the accreditation program has a third party come in, usually a university or private company, come in and do a study to measure reliability and validity and see if the tool is actually measuring what it says it measures and is doing that reliably. Reliability and reliability and testing means consistent outcomes. Does this tool have consistent outcomes? If I sent 10 people into this program to evaluate it, would they come out with the same general scores, the same general evaluation of that program? And that’s important because we want the people who are using this tool to all kind of be on the same page. We don’t want a big disparity in how they rate things. Validity measures whether the tool measures what it claims. So if a tool is claiming to measure program quality, for example, validity testing tests to see if it actually measures that, which is also something caregivers should be concerned with because if the tool doesn’t actually measure what it claims, then it’s not a real valuable tool. Programs, like I said earlier, are lacking in quality assessment tools, this validity and reliability. There are a number of them who don’t do this testing when they should. And the reason they’re lacking is this process is expensive and it’s time consuming. And it has to be repeated on a regular basis over time. It’s like every five, I think five years is what is the prime recommendation. Maybe every 10 years the tool is reassessed for reliability and validity or every time they make changes to the tool. And it’s troubling when they don’t follow through with that. Should you trust a tool that has not been tested for reliability and validity? My response would be no, you shouldn’t. You’ve got to judge this for yourself. And should you trust an organization that’s asking you to trust a tool that hasn’t been measured for reliability and validity? And again, my take would be no, no you shouldn’t. And yet these organizations are out there and I’ll name drop a couple of them. One is the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the other is the National Family Child Care Association. Both of these programs, these organizations, have accreditation programs and it is very unlikely they’ve done reliability and validity testing because if they had, they would be touting this on their website as a feather in their cap. I’ve served on the National Board of the Family Child Care Association and on the State Board of the NAYC for the state of Iowa for a bunch of years and at no time in those positions could I find any proof that this kind of testing was done on a regular basis. And since then, and before serving on those boards, I dug into it and could not find anything. I’ve recently done another big search, including using some deep search from some different AI models that can go through and find things a lot faster than I can, and this reliability and validity testing don’t exist for these accreditation programs. Now does that mean they’re bad programs? Absolutely not. They may be very good at reliably measuring what they say they measure, but there’s no proof of that. And so caregivers who jump through all of the hoops for accreditation or quality rating stars or whatever it is, are maybe jumping through hoops for something that doesn’t mean what they think it means. And it seems kind of disingenuous for an organization to say, hey, you should, if you want to be a quality program, here’s what you need to do, when they haven’t, that organization hasn’t actually done what they need to do to prove that the tool they’ve come up with actually accomplishes that goal. So some things to think about and maybe some questions to ask if you’re considering accreditation or being part of a quality rating system or already are, because I think a lot of caregivers aren’t aware of the idea of reliability, validity testing, and they go through these programs without actually knowing that they might not be accurate. There are some cool tools out there that do do this measuring, but there are many that don’t. And that’s a problem in this profession. Wrapping up, go out and ask about reliability and validity testing if it’s something you don’t know about and you’re curious about. And if an organization gets back to you and says they haven’t done such testing, dig into the why. And look, if you dig into this, I’d love to hear what you find out. Amazon idea for this month. Oh, we skipped. I’ve got to go back here. We’ve got to transition over here. So this is somebody using my Amazon link bought this stuff. This is a six inch by 10 foot puncture resistant PVC dust collecting hose. Now you can use this in a woodworking shop for collecti

    13 min

  10. 26/05/2025

    PHQP_0021 Your Daily Schedule’s Too Cluttered

    PHQP 0021 Your Daily Schedule’s Too Cluttered: Jeff critiques overly busy early learning program schedules, arguing they disrupt children’s need for big blocks of uninterrupted, self-directed play and exploration. He highlights how frequent transitions create friction and behavior issues, offering practical advice to simplify schedules while meeting regulatory requirements. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0021 Your Daily Schedule’s Too Cluttered Episode Notes The Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap CCBAG_1186 Daily Schedules Daily Schedules | Play Space Critiques Part 12 Bones_0024 Schedules Vs Routines Perspectives_0007 Over Scheduled Kids Show Notes Subscribe | Video Episodes or Audio Episodes Contact Jeeves The Intern | jeeves@playvolutionhq.com Contact Jeff | podcast@playvolutionhq.com Support The Show Via Amazon | Shop Jeff’s Amazon Associate link Support The Show With A Membership | Become a member Make A One-Time Contribution | Buy us a shot Share Content | Share photos and short videos of kids at play Visit | Playvolution HQ or Explorations Early Learning About | Jeff Training | Learn about upcoming online events or booking an event The Your Daily Schedule’s Too Cluttered Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I’m Jeff Johnson. Thanks for tuning in on With the Show. So on the PlayvolutionHQ site, I’m working on a section of classic kids games. And one of the games I’m doing a write-up on is the game of horse. And it’s a ball and basket based game. Many of you have probably played it or seen it played. And anyway, in researching this, I found video online of some dudes, adult dudes, playing a version of this game that involves shock collars. Each one of them had a dog training collar on. I mean, I’ve got these types of collars for both of my big dogs. And I pretty much use the vibrate and beep settings, not the shock settings. But I mean, I’ve probably shocked myself more than I’ve shocked my dogs. But anyway, all these guys have these collars on. And if you miss the shot, then the button got pushed and you got a shock. Because one of the things about games is games have consequences. And these guys kind of raise the stakes and the consequences for their game of horse. And I found it amusing, a very dude thing. I think I’m going to use a video in the article as a variation people can look at, but maybe not a recommendation. So look for that coming sometime in the future. On with the show, topic one, our only topic for this week, the daily schedule. Your daily schedule is too cluttered. Now that’s kind of a blanket statement. I haven’t seen your daily schedule probably. I’m talking about your program’s daily schedule. And I’m making the assumption that it’s too cluttered, but it probably is. If yours isn’t, I’d love to see it. If yours is, I’d love to see it too. I love looking at these things. And basically where I’m coming from here is the idea that I’ve espoused from the beginning of the show is that young children need big blocks of uninterrupted time for self-directed play and exploration. And if they’re in programs with daily schedules that are broken down into little blocks of time that aren’t self-directed and aren’t full of play and exploration, we are doing kids a disservice. So your schedule is probably working counter to what you want to do if what you want to do is what I’ve got up on the slide there. Big blocks of uninterrupted time for self-directed play and exploration. And so one place where caregivers who want to have more playful environments struggle is with their daily schedules. Because a lot of times stuff gets shoved into the schedule. Well, we’ll get to that in a minute. Early learning program schedules tend towards tiny blocks of time. And that’s just a fact. I’ve been looking at these things for 30 years now. I’ve got a collection of 120-plus handbooks I’ve collected over the last couple years that most of them have schedules in them. And I’ve got a couple here I’ll show you in a second. They are open to close of a program full of busyness. And it doesn’t lead to big blocks of uninterrupted time for child-led play and exploration. Here’s one. I don’t know what kind of device you’re watching this on, but this is a real one I collected. 8.15 in the morning, circle time, 8.15 to 8.30, day per change, 8.30 to 9, snack, 9 to 9.30, outside, 9.30 to 10, math, exploration, 10 to 10, 10.45, art, 10.45 to 11.15, language. And on and on it goes until 5.30 to 6.30, preparing to go home. And see, that’s quite a lot. That’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 transitions in the course of a day. Another one. Again, this is a real program schedule. This is an afternoon preschool program. You arrive at 12.15, you’re dismissed at 3.45, and I counted these earlier, 10 transitions during the course of that day. Most of them broken down into 15 minute or half hour or maybe 45 minute blocks of time. Not a lot of time for kids to engage in big blocks of uninterrupted, self-directed play. There’s one more here. This one, again, a daily preschool for three-year-olds, 6.45, they open, 6 o’clock is the end of the day. And again, there’s a good dozen transitions in here. None of these have big blocks of time for uninterrupted play and exploration, that is child selected and led. And again, we’re losing out if we don’t have that. So, let’s get into the problems with these complicated, busy, cluttered schedules. One, those transition times create friction. The hardest parts of the day in most programs, most of the time, is pick up and drop off time. And then every time there’s a transition during the day. Because at those times, we’re going from doing one thing and having one mindset to doing another thing and having another mindset. And that requires a lot of emotional regulation and self-control that a lot of little people haven’t mastered yet. And so, when you’re asking the kid who is finally getting focused on their dramatic play to stop and clean up, and then go someplace else and do something else that they may or may not want to do, you’re looking for friction, you’re looking for an emotional meltdown, you’re looking for upheaval. And so, a lot of the head-butting, a lot of the friction, a lot of the problems in our days as caregivers happen during those transitions. So, one of the benefits of moving towards bigger blocks of time for self-directed child-led play and exploration is you have fewer of those transitions and then you have less of that friction. So, our day becomes easier. Fewer transition times equal fewer behavior problems. I mean, I’ve experienced it myself as a caregiver in the programs that I’ve operated, but I’ve heard it over and over and over again. Programs that make this switch notice this drop in behavior problems, this drop in child meltdowns, this drop in outbursts. Because when you get to keep doing the thing that you chose to do until you’re done doing it, and then you get to choose and go do something else, there’s less of that friction. And look, one of the pushbacks I’ll hear from this is, but Jeff, in school they have to. And the response to that is they’re not in school yet. They’re not school age yet. Just because we’re going to expect them to do something when they’re older doesn’t mean we need to push it on them now. Because the fact is the schools should be offering kids bigger blocks of time for self-directed play and exploration as well in the early elementary years. So, just because some other program they’re going to be in in the future that uses bad practice does something doesn’t mean we should be doing that in the early learning world. There are a lot of kids that are going to grow up and drive, but that doesn’t mean we give them the keys to the F-150 when they’re three and a half years old. So, we don’t need to push. We don’t need to do that rushing. Another thing is schedules often look that deal to keep them happy. Whoever your them is, maybe it’s licensing, maybe it’s the state quality rating people, maybe it’s the Eckers person, maybe it’s the accreditation people. But look, that one that had, okay, we’ve got math here and we’ve got language here and all that stuff. But the thing is, kids are learning math in their play and exploration. They’re learning language in their play and exploration. But it’s easy for programs just to write that stuff down on the schedule and then that person comes in to do their observation to see if they’re going to get accredited or how many stars they’re going to get and they see it on the schedule. They see that those things are being done and that box gets checked. But simpler schedules can check all those boxes. You can write a schedule that offers big blocks of uninterrupted time for child-led, self-directed play that checks all the boxes. And look, if you need help with that, send me a PDF of your current schedule and send me PDFs of where the guidelines are, the boxes you need to check, and I’ll come up with a version of a schedule that offers bigger blocks of time and meets all those requirements that checks them off that they want to see. So we can do this. It takes some work. It takes some playing with language. But if your schedule is all cluttered and it’s all broken up because you feel it has to be that way to keep them happy, it can provide bigger blocks of time and still keep them happy. Another thing is, oh, we got to wrap up a little bit quicker. And so just pulling back a little bit and looking at that schedule and saying, is this really how we want to spend our day? One of the other things about young kids is they need predictable routines more than they need predictable schedules. So the routine is we have morning snack. Kids probably

    16 min

  11. 19/05/2025

    PHQP_0020 Schema Play Basics

    PHQP 0020 Schema Play Basics – Jeff explores the fundamentals of schema play, rooted in Piaget’s cognitive development theory, highlighting how children’s repeated behavior patterns, like throwing or enclosing, reflect an innate curiosity that drives learning, physical development, and sensory integration, and offers practical ways adults can support these behaviors by creating play-friendly environments with open-ended materials. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0020 Schema Play Basics Episode Notes Schema Play Theory Transforming Schema Filling And Emptying Schema Going Through Schema Back And Forth Schema Orientation Schema Enveloping Schema Transporting Schema Positioning Schema Rotation Schema Enclosing Schema Connecting Schema Scattering Schema Trajectory Schema Show Notes Subscribe | Video Episodes or Audio Episodes Contact Jeeves The Intern | jeeves@playvolutionhq.com Contact Jeff | podcast@playvolutionhq.com Support The Show Via Amazon | Shop Jeff’s Amazon Associate link Support The Show With A Membership | Become a member Make A One-Time Contribution | Buy us a shot Share Content | Share photos and short videos of kids at play Visit | Playvolution HQ or Explorations Early Learning About | Jeff Training | Learn about upcoming online events or booking an event The Schema Play Basics Transcript Welcome to Playvolution HQ Podcast, I’m Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on the show. So I’ve really been overjoyed, I guess is the word, happy. Pulled out of my normal stupor of disdain for life. No, that sounds too serious. No, there’s been a lot of kids outside playing in the neighborhood lately. And about a year ago, there was a lot of kids outside playing in the neighborhood. And then like the three kids that apparently initiated all the outdoor play moved. And now it’s back up again. I was taking the dogs out for a walk the other day and I kind of counted on our short walk through the neighborhood. We passed, I think it was like a group of 14 kids all running around playing some sort of tag game that they’d invented. And there were bikes all over the places and they’re left and not stolen. And there are balls and bats out and there’s kids climbing trees and building swings with found objects and all kinds of chaos. And it’s delightful and it’s good to see because there’s so much value in that kind of outdoor play. And for a long time, I didn’t see a lot of it. And I don’t know if it’s just a pocket of it here in my corner of the world or if it’s going on other places. If you’re seeing more kids outside being kids the way me and my cohort did back in the 70s and 80s, I’d love to hear about it. So let’s get into other things. Topic one, only again, only one topic for this week. Schema play basics. So we’re gonna kind of delve into an overview of schema play, I guess. And then in future episodes, I want to probably dig into some individual play schema and go into them in more detail with more examples and those kinds of things. So let’s get started on this. So schema play theory is rooted in PSJA’s cognitive development theory as a starter point. So that’s where it’s philosophical slash research basis is. That’s where it’s thought origins are, I guess. And what a play schema is, is a repeated behavior pattern in children’s play. So it’s something you see kids doing over and over again. Maybe exactly the same way, maybe different ways. Maybe you observe the same activity in different locations. Maybe there are different variations of the gauge in it. These are usually things children are kind of driven to repeat because they benefit from them in some way. And we can dig into that a little bit deeper. So they’re driven by this internal curiosity to do these things. And that drive seems to be kind of an innate thing. Nobody teaches them this drive. They just do it. And as we get into this, you’ll notice that there are some things kids just tend to be interested in at certain stages in their development. Not all kids all the time, but lots of kids lots of the time. And we’ll dig into a couple of these in a minute. So there’s this curiosity and it seems to be kind of inborn. I would call it, I’d describe it as an evolutionary strategy for figuring out the world. It’s what a lot of schema is. A evolutionary strategy for knowing, an evolutionary strategy for figuring things out, for exploring. And so they’re driven by this internal curiosity. And it supports learning. There’s a lot of cognitive stuff going on here. They’re learning a lot about, as we’ll see when we get into some examples, schema play helps kids learn a lot about just the realities of the physical world. There’s language learning going on. There’s lots of learning happening when kids are exploring these different schema. This play also supports physical development and sensory integration. A lot of these involve a lot of movement, a lot of activity. And that’s building the physical body, their physicality, but also wiring those eight primary sensory systems I’ve talked about. I’ve talked about before on this show. And that’s a huge part of the early learning years is getting the body ready for life. And those sensory systems need to be wired up so we can effectively get information to our brain. And our bodies need to be mastered to a certain extent so we can do things like hold our writing utensils and sit still and walk and do all those kind of important things. So the exploration of play schema kind of supports all of that. And also supports skill mastery. Things like walking and moving their bodies in different ways and certain physical skills as we’ll maybe get into. So there’s a lot of learning, a lot of benefit from setting up environments where kids are free to explore the schema that they’re interested in. And then letting that lead to their learning. And that seems to be, it seems to be what a lot of play-based programs are doing whether they’re up to speed about play schema theory or not. Really one of the biggest ways we can support children in engaging in schema play is to create the kind of environment we create for all kinds of play. Lots of time, space, open-ended materials, read that as loose parts. And an adult who’s supportive of letting things go where they go while maintaining health and safety. So a couple examples. Trajectory schema play is an interest in the way things move through space. Now those things might be balls or blocks or their bodies. But it’s an interest in the way things get from one place to the other. So I mentioned that a lot of times kids will explore these things at certain ages. Have you ever met a toddler who likes to throw things? And the answer to that is probably yes. Toddlers go through this stage where they like to throw things. And so if we’re working in a toddler room, one of the strategies you can use to make that environment supportive of toddlers is to make sure they’ve got safe things to throw. Lots of bean bags and shower loofahs and aluminum foil balls or whatever it is you’ve got and make sure that there’s something they can throw and so that you can redirect them to those materials when they want to throw the things that they’re not supposed to throw, like the hardwood blocks. If you try to outlaw throwing with a group of kids who are interested in throwing, you’re creating problems for yourself. Because again, these kids are biologically driven to explore the world in this way, throwing things. And if you’re saying no, you can’t do this thing that you feel is biologically necessary, you’re gonna have a hard time enforcing that rule. So one of the biggest ways we can go about supporting a lot of the schema play is to just saying no to stuff. Quit saying no to stuff. And figure out ways to be supportive of it. If you can’t say yes, come up with some version of no, but. No, you can’t throw the blocks, but you can throw these bean bags. Some version of that. So you can say yes to the general idea of trajectory. Now another way they explore trajectory is moving their bodies through space. So lots of running and hopping and jumping and skipping and climbing and all these kind of things going on with kids of certain ages. And again, when we say no to these things, when we ban them, when we play movement cop, we are really hindering their development. And again, I wanna come back and do a whole episode on trajectory, so I’m not gonna spend any more time on that. But another one is scattering. Have you ever met a toddler, for example, who likes to walk across the room with a bucket of blocks and then dump it out? Or throw their plate off the table? Or take handfuls of spaghetti and throw them at the dog? This is scattering. I mean, it sounds exactly like it is. Or swoop things off the edge of the table. This is an exploration. And so what’s going on here is they’re exploring the way those objects react to being dropped or brushed off the table or whatever it is. And that’s giving them a lot of information about how the physical world works. Because dumping out a bucket of blocks is different than dumping out a bucket of feathers, which is different than dumping out a bucket of bouncy balls. And so there’s a lot of scattering going on with some kids. And again, something we as adults often wanna say no to, but kids can benefit from. So enclosing is kind of a fun one. Have you ever seen kids in the block area, they’ll do that thing where they’ll put a green plastic dinosaur in the middle of the block area and then they’ll build a wall around it and they’ll take an orange T-Rex and they’ll build walls around it? That’s enclosing. Putting things in other things or building enclosures for things. And again, this is something a lot of kids are drawn to at certain stages in their development. They don’

    19 min

  12. 12/05/2025

    PHQP_0019 Programming Consistency

    PHQP_0019 Programming Consistency delves into the value of consistent early learning programs. Jeff outlines a six-tier hierarchy—vision, mission, philosophy, policies, procedures, and practices—to ensure clarity and alignment for staff, kids, and parents. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0019 Programming Consistency Episode Notes The 6-Tier Programming Consistency Hierarchy Mission Statement Vision Statement 3 Valuable Tips For Writing A Mission Statement Compose A Sensational Philosophy Statement | 4 Tips Show Notes Subscribe | Video Episodes or Audio Episodes Contact Jeeves The Intern | jeeves@playvolutionhq.com Contact Jeff | podcast@playvolutionhq.com Support The Show Via Amazon | Shop Jeff’s Amazon Associate link Support The Show With A Membership | Become a member Make A One-Time Contribution | Buy us a shot Share Content | Share photos and short videos of kids at play Visit | Playvolution HQ or Explorations Early Learning About | Jeff Training | Learn about upcoming online events or booking an event The Programming Consistency Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I’m Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on the show. So, I’ve got a new scary thing I’ve started working on. I did the 50 mile walk and now I needed something new so I’ve decided I’m gonna learn guitar. Now, I have no sense of rhythm. I have no musical sense. I have very, it appears, uncoordinated fingers but I decided this would be a great old guy thing. I can practice a little bit at a time. It’s gonna build my proprioception. It’s apparently good for the old brain to learn new habits like this and it’s gonna be fun. So, stay tuned for updates on my progression. I ordered the car, I can barely say guitar, ordered the guitar the other day. It arrived, the amp hasn’t shown up yet. It’s a nice little Squier Stratocaster. I’ve decided, I’ve made sure Tasha, my wife, knows already that I’m not gonna get real good at playing this guitar because I don’t wanna have to buy leather pants and deal with groupies and have a heroin addiction. But I should learn to play a song or two. It’s gonna be fun. So, let’s move on into things. Topic one, the one and only topic for this week, program consistency. So, let’s dig into it. I meet a lot of confused caregivers. So, picture somebody working in a toddler room with a co-worker, maybe they’re the lead teacher, maybe they’re not and they wanna make a change but they don’t have their co-worker on board and so they struggle or they struggle because things are done one way in the toddler room and a different way in the preschool room and then a third way in the school age room. And not just age-based differences but really philosophical differences for the way kids are dealt with. Or maybe somebody is a member of a professional organization that says one thing in their shiny, glossy, three-fold handout and does other things in practice. It’s really hard to know where you stand in a lot of these situations. And one thing having a consistent program, one thing program consistency does is it lets everybody know where they stand and that can be valuable. So, what am I talking about? I’m talking about continuity and predictability for programs. And we’re gonna get into this in a minute but ideally, an early learning program and we’ll focus on child serving programs, programs providing child care right now. These programs want to be consistent. They want to be predictable. They want parents to have a unified vision of what their philosophy and mission is because then everybody’s on the same page. Everybody is trying to work towards the same thing. Everybody knows what they’re supposed to be doing. But when programs lack that, when one room does things one way because that’s the way Ms. Kim has done things for 35 years and somebody new comes into the classroom next door and wants to try things differently and that’s okay too because hey, we got people to show up for the job so just having warm bodies here might be enough. It can get really confusing for kids, parents, and staff. And so continuity and predictability come from having that program consistency that I’m talking about. So here, a little over a year ago, I put together a six-tier hierarchy of I think about what we need structurally in programs to have this consistency. So let’s kind of go through those. So starting out, we got a vision, a vision statement. And this is how we want the world to be. And this can be broad. This can be beyond your program. I envision a world where all children have joyful, happy childhoods, something like that, something broad-based, something aspirational, an aspiration for the future. And that becomes a guide for everything that follows on this hierarchy I put together. And so first you build a vision. I’ve got links, I think I’ve got it in the show note for this episode about building vision statements. And each one of these six things, we’ll come back to them and do individual resources and know there’s already some resources about them on the Playvolution HQ site. So next is mission. This is the statement about why we are here in terms of your program. And so your mission statement is really, really a statement of the organization’s purpose. So maybe your mission is, our mission is to support children in their self-directed playful learning. And it can be something as simple as that. In fact, in my review of program handbooks, what I’ve seen is that mission statements often get long and convoluted and sound like they were written by a committee. And that makes it really hard for them to be useful in terms of consistency because they try to cover so much ground. So a mission should be very short, very simple, very to the point, and state why we are here as an organization. And again, we can come back to this in more detail in a future episode. Next is philosophy. So this is what we believe. This is the core values and principles of the program. I think the best way to write this up is as a bulleted list of what we believe. We believe children learn through self-directed play. We believe children need large blocks of time for self-directed play and exploration, whatever it is. And you can name check Piaget and Peter Gray and Angela Hanscom and whoever else your philosophy is based on in your philosophy statement. That philosophy statement is, again, what we believe and our core values and principles. And these philosophy grows from the mission, which grows from the vision. It’s kind of an inverse pyramid we’re kind of building here. And so next up is, I gotta find the right place to click, sorry. There we go, I got lost for a minute. So next up is policies. And you can think of your policies as what we say we do here. And these are clear statements of position on given subjects. Now, I say what we say we do here because there’s often conflict between what we say we do here and what we do here. You can think about policies as what we intend to do here. And this is clear statements of positions on a given subject. So your policy might be, we engage in messy play. And we are closed these days out of the year for holidays. And this is our operating hours. And here’s how we deal with injuries. And here’s what we do if there’s a tornado warning and those kinds of things. So your policies, again, what we say we do here. And they grow from your philosophy, which grows from the mission, which grows from the vision. And so next we have, I don’t know why I forget where to click, procedures. And procedures are how we say we do the things here. How we say we do things here, excuse me. And so you can think of if policies are what we do, you can think about procedures as how we do those things. Policies should be, these are how our policies should be implemented. These are how we go about making our policies actionable. This is how we go about making our policies real for those around us. So if our policy is that we close on these particular days, procedure for closing on those days is, okay, we give parents a reminder a week ahead of time and we make sure those days are all listed in the parent handbook. And when parents are walking out the door the day before a holiday, we make sure that they know, hey, remember, we’re closed Monday. Those kind of things. And that’s what our procedures are. Our procedures for dealing with injuries might be one group of statements. And our procedures for dealing with medication administration, for example, might be a little bit more precise in detail because there’s not a lot of flexibility in those things. Whereas our procedures for muddy play, our policy might be we engage in muddy play on a regular basis and how we go about it might be open to interpretation by the staff so they’ve got a little bit more flexibility. So procedures, sometimes they’re very rigid and controlled. Sometimes they’ve got more flexibility. And again, we can get into those in future episodes in some more depth. And then next up, finally, is our practices. And you can think about practices as what really happens here. All the real world choices made through the course of a day. And if your program is consistent, every one of the daily practices that staff engage in is based on a procedure or a policy or the philosophy or the mission or the vision and the vision of the program. They all lead back to that vision. And if you can build this through thread through all six levels of this hierarchy, then you’re probably gonna have a fairly predictable, fairly consistent program where children know what to expect where parents know what to expect. And that’s a good thing. Because we’re living in a world where there are a lot of early learning staff people that are just kind of muddling through because they don’t know what’s expected of them. It’s to the poin

    15 min
  • 12 Episodes

About

The Playvolution HQ Podcast dives deep into play and early learning, from loose parts and power play to school readiness and curriculum. This weekly, short-format show goes beyond the resources available at playvolutionhq.com, delivering original content like DIY ideas, terminology deep-dives, commentary, news, early learning history, and more.

Information

  • Creator
    Jeff Johnson
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2025
  • Episodes
    12
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Explorations Early Learning
  • Show Website
    Playvolution HQ Podcast