A Co-Production from Learn With Less® and the Play On Words Podcast Are you constantly wondering if you’re doing enough as a parent? Do you feel pressure to “get it right” when it comes to your baby or toddler’s development? In this episode, In this co-produced episode, of the “Play On Words” podcast and the Learn With Less®” podcast, Ayelet Marinovich of Learn With Less® joins host Beth Gaskill of Big City Readers. Ayelet Marinovich is a pediatric speech-language pathologist, parent educator, & founder of Learn With Less®. She’s the author of Understanding Your Baby & Understanding Your Toddler, 2 incredible resources that remind parents: you don’t need fancy toys or complicated activities—your everyday interactions are already powerful learning moments. We talk about:🧠 Why you don’t need more stuff to help your child learn✨ How to feel confident that you’re doing “enough”👶 The surprising ways babies and toddlers learn best📚 Simple, evidence-based ways to support early development🎵 Why everyday routines (yes, even diaper changes!) are packed with learning opportunities If you’ve ever doubted yourself as a parent, this episode is your reminder: you are enough. 💛 Helpful Resources Related to This Episode The Learn With Less® Infant/Toddler Development Blueprint Ayelet’s books: Understanding Your Baby & Understanding Your Toddler Connect Learn Play – Digital / Printable infant, toddler, and pre-school aged ideas to provide simple, enriching ways to support early development through play, language, music, and movement – using everyday items – helping you Learn With Less®! Learn With Less® Fundamentals Course Big City Readers Courses Ayelet’s Musical Album, Strength In Words: Music For Families Connect With Us Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest Beth: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest Text Transcript of The Podcast Episode Beth: Welcome back to the Play On Words podcast. I am so excited and a little bit nervous today to have Ayelet Marinovich here from Learn With Less® to talk about: Do kids really need toys to learn and thrive? If you don’t know Ayelet, she is a child development guru, parent, play based learning specialist, and speech therapist too, right? So many things, I’ll let you introduce yourself, but this is an episode (I already know) is going to be so great. So welcome to the show. Ayelet: Thank you so much for having me. Beth. It’s great to be here. Yay. Beth: Okay, so tell us a little bit about you and Learn With Less® for the people who might not know you! Ayelet: Sure. So again, I’m Ayelet. I have been a speech and language therapist since, gosh, 2009 / 2010. When I became a mom in 2014, I was far from where I grew up, which was here in California. My partner and I had moved to London, and so I was pregnant and had my first child there, across the pond. I was really looking for, number one, community. Number two, a way to utilize the knowledge that I have in my professional arena, and connect that with creating connection points with other new families. So I started leading caregiver and baby classes with my own child, just in my community, out of our home. I loved it so much because it was an opportunity to connect, to bring people together and, again, to share information that at least I knew. Obviously, the overwhelm of early parenthood is intense, and this was a place that I could feel confident. I could feel at least a little bit less vulnerable and and really share that information with other new parents and caregivers who I knew were feeling the same way. I just started leading these groups, and really facilitating these groups and utilizing that knowledge, and just expanding on the kinds of questions that I was getting and asking myself. What can I do to support and connect with this teeny, tiny human in my world? And yeah, that’s, that’s how it came to be. Beth: Wow. And so now, are you still leading them, or are you mostly training and coaching other people to lead them? Ayelet: Yeah, primarily I license and support other educator and therapist types to utilize the curriculum that I developed, to use in their own communities. This is amazing because it expands the impact that I can have exponentially, and really allows me to feel like I’m putting something into the world that is healing and helpful. Beth: It is. I even like the song on your podcast. Is that in – do you sing that in the class? Hello, everybody, I get it stuck in my head when I’m listening. I love singing it in my own house, like when I’m making dinner. So, okay, do you do miss teaching the in-person or the actual “caregiver & me” classes? Now that’s my growing pain, too: You want to have a bigger reach, but you kind of have to give a little! Ayelet: Yeah, and I do from time to time, often offer them virtually! I mean, it’s funny, right? Because when I started the licensing program, it was February of 2020, so there was, of course, a big switch to, I now need to ensure that other folks also are able to lead these virtually. I had actually been doing this since 2017 myself, for a variety of reasons. There has always been a need for virtual connection, and always will be. So I do still lead classes from time to time, especially when I’m getting that itch. Beth: Oh good, that’s kind of how I do it, too. I was just talking with someone yesterday, and they said, so you don’t get to be with kids anymore? I answered, No, I still do. I do, say, a once a month meetup, but it’s so hard because you think to yourself, I want to reach every kid and family! I think we align a lot on that – that is my big focus: community for families, whether they’re in school or in the baby stage. Originally I started because I saw so many parents having struggles with knowing how to advocate for their child in an IEP meeting, or like things like that. There needs to be a bridge between school and home: how to find your community, asked the right resources… and then my work expanded to people who don’t need IEPs! Yeah, it’s such a need. Community is such an important part of being a parent! Ayelet: Yes, especially in these uncertain times. Beth: I know! Every post I do, I ask myself, does this matter? The world is on fire! I know you are a big advocate of using what you have. I mean, your literal company is called Learn With Less®, right? I once posted something many years ago, and I still think about it, because I kind of got in trouble, but I posted something that a popular toy subscription company had sent me – this little toy that was a box and it had tissues in it, and you pull them out. I was like, so cute. And I made a post that said, and also, this actual box of tissues does the exact same thing. There’s no need to buy this. Ayelet: I literally have one sitting behind me, yes! Beth: The reason I got in trouble is because a toy store owner said, I’m so mad at you! but I said, I’m sorry, there’s enough for people that want to buy toys and people to know that they don’t need, too. So can you talk a little bit about what role toys actually play in child development? What Role Do Toys Play in Child Development? Ayelet: I mean, first of all, I like to say this whole the baby industry is sort of a “The Emperor has no toys” situation, right? I am not anti toy. My children have always had toys, either that I have bought or that other family members or people in our community have given them. But my my kids also have always known that the wooden spoon and the paper towel roll are equally as entertaining and an equally valid developmental tool. The power of any tool or toy is not inherently on the box that says “this is an educational toy.” Anyone can put that tag on, say, cupcake liner and say “educational toy.” It’s the actual interaction with that toy and with others that makes the difference. I think it also really comes down to the power of connection! And at Learn With Less®, we have four pillars that we want to define around creating more connection, more opportunities for interaction, more vocabulary, more modeling, more reciprocity. So those are, as I define them here at Learn With Less®, play, talk, sing and move. And I’m happy to go into that, if you’d like. Beth: Oh, please! How Does Play Support Early Learning? Ayelet: Yeah! So around play, we want to define that with attention to the following principles. First, open ended play, meaning we want to encourage caregivers to really engage in the exploration of the environment and everyday objects. Also, being playful can simply mean exploring, experimenting, offering varied environments and varying objects! Most importantly, we want to actually help the adults in the room see that being playful is a different way of looking at what we as grown ups come to define as play. Many adults in the room come into the idea of playing with their child as following set of rules. For instance, we hit the ball, we run, we score. Or it can be thought of as a procedural exercise: we open the book, we read the page, we turn the page, repeat. Encouraging caregivers to play with no specific end goal in mind can really require them to reframe their entire thinking. I think a lot of your audience are educators or therapists, as well. So in a therapeutic context, you’re going to want to weave whatever skill you’re working on into the play. For instance, it might be that a professional is working on turn taking, eye gaze, joint attention, imitation, first words, or gesture use. We want to encourage and create an environment where that caregiver is encouraged to be flexible and accepting of what is happening, what might happen next, and what their child is doing. Finally, withi
