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  • OOL_0082 Building Executive Functioning Skills

    OOL_0082 Building Executive Functioning Skills
    2025/04/15
    Nikolai Pizarro of Raising Readers joins host Annie Friday to discuss the relationship between adult caregiver/parent and child and the various ways we can support each other and growing or maintaining our executive functioning skills. Nikolai shares her vision of de-centering school and remembering the way all things are learned is relational. By focusing on relationship, we can support our young people learning with or without school. Building executive functioning isn't just about reducing screentime and creating tasks to keep kids busy. It's also about finding true meaning in our choice of activities and showing up as our authentic selves in our unschooling and schooling experiences. Thanks for listening! Links Share a comment or ask a questionSupport the show (and save 10%) when you shop early learning trainings at Explorations Early LearningVisit the show archives to browse and search all episodesMore AnnieMore CandisVisit Blue Bridge School's website or Instagram
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    40 分
  • PHQP_0015 Hazard Mitigation

    PHQP_0015 Hazard Mitigation
    2025/04/14
    In PHQP_0015 Hazard Mitigation, Jeff explores the importance of supporting risk-taking in children's play by effectively mitigating hazards. He outlines three hazard categories and shares five practical mitigation strategies. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0015 Hazard Mitigation Episode Notes Hazard Understanding Danger, Hazard, And Risk 3 Hazard Categories 5 Hazard Mitigation Strategies Early Learning Physical Hazard Rating Matrix Field Book And Field Notes Notebooks The Hazard Mitigation Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. Thanks for pushing play. I'm Jeff Johnson on with the show. So I'm out for a walk the other day, as I want to do, and I walked by the local playground where I've seen kids doing things I've told stories about on this show before. And they're, the playground is, excuse me, full of cardboard. And I've got no idea where it came from. But they, the kids had a bunch of cardboard boxes, maybe somebody moved in the neighborhood or anything. And they had some of them, the ends open, and they were, they were put together to form a maybe 12 foot long tunnel. And a couple kids were building a suit of armor or robot or Iron Man suit or something out of them, covering themselves. And a couple kids were using hunks of cardboard to try to surf down the slide. And some kids were rolling around, hiding in the cardboard, and on and on it went. And continued my walk, came back an hour and a half later, walking by going the other direction. And just a couple kids headed for the, heading for the nearby dumpster with the last bits of cardboard. So somehow the cardboard showed up and was a wonderful play material for a couple hours. And then they tidied up and went on about their day. So that was, that was kind of great. I liked, liked seeing it. It reminded me of my, my well-spent childhood. So let's get into this episode. Topic one, hazard mitigation. And so we talked earlier about risk and how risk is important. How there are, are basically four types of risk. There's physical risk, which is what we consider the one we spend most of our time on. There's emotional risk, there's social risk, and there's cognitive risk. And one of the things that we want to do, if we want to support risk-taking, which we should, is to get better at mitigating hazards. So let's go through a little review of the terminology first. So danger is something that may cause harm. Again, my favorite example, a kitten. A kitten may cause harm. Hazard equals a danger not easily seen or predicted. So the, the teeth and the claws of that little kitten are the most dangerous parts. And so those are the hazards. Those are what makes the kitten dangerous. And a risk is something you can observe, evaluate, and choose. So if you're four and you've never held a baby kitten before. A baby kitten before? Isn't that kitten as a baby cat? Maybe baby kitten is redundant. Anyway, if you've never held a kitten before, you can evaluate that situation and decide whether you want to hold the kitten or not. Where hazard mitigation comes in is you, as an adult, informing that child about those potential dangers that they might not see or anticipate. You can say, okay, you can hold the kitten, but you need to be, need to be aware they've got, they got sharp little teeth in their little mouths and they got razor blades on the end of their fingertips, and you've got to hold them carefully. And if the kitten gets scared, or if you grab them too hard, or you antagonize him, he might try to claw or bite you. And so that is an example of hazard mitigation. Hazard mitigation might also be wearing long sleeves when you're holding kittens for the first time, because long sleeves kind of protect your arms a little bit from, from kitten teeth and claws. And so those, making kids aware of those things is really what hazard mitigation is about.
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    18 分
  • PHQP_0014 Heavy Work

    PHQP_0014 Heavy Work
    2025/04/07
    In PHQP 0014 Heavy Work, Jeff dives into the wonders of kids pushing, pulling, and hauling their way to growth. This episode unpacks how heavy work boosts strength and coordination, brings calm, and more. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0014 Heavy Work Episode Notes Heavy Work Heavy Work Simplified Heavy Work 5 Simple Ways to Support “Heavy Work” The Important Role Of Kinetic Chains In Early Learning PHQP_0006 Don’t Neglect Sensory Integration The Benefits of Playful Aggression DIY | Concrete Blocks Balanced And Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children The Heavy Work Transcript Welcome to another episode of the Playvolution HQ podcast. I'm Jeff Johnson. Thank you for pushing play. On with the show. So, uh, oh look my slides are off. How untidy. Um, so I found a found a new dolphin bone at the beach the the other day to add to my loose parts collection. It's kind of broken down and battered but I kind of like it. I've got I've got five others two two other vertebrae and and a couple of a couple of ribs. So my plan is to eventually build build my own dolphin which I really look forward to. I find another bone every every eight months or so along the beach. It's been delightful. I'm pretty sure they're dolphins. 98% sure they're dolphins. They're not human and the we've got a lot more dolphins in the area than we do whales and they are mammal bones. So I'm assuming dolphins. If I find out otherwise I will let you know. So I'm excited for that growing collection of loose parts. Topic one for this episode is pretty much gonna be the theme of the whole show is heavy work. So heavy work is activity that pushes or pulls against the body or involves carrying and this is something that is really beneficial to kids. We'll get into that in a minute but this activity is just pushing pulling and carrying is is something kids are kind of wired and interested in and we should figure out how to how to work more of that into into their days. So heavy work involves creating force and defying gravity and so think about all the interesting ways kids apply gravity. Running is pushing really they're pushing their feet against the ground to propel themselves when they run. Jumping is pushing. Jumping is heavy work. Climbing is heavy work. Arms are pulling. Legs are pushing. So think about all those kind of activities. Hauling heavy buckets of sand. Pulling a wagon. Pushing somebody on a sled or pushing somebody who's sitting on a skateboard or riding a bike or riding rollerblades or climbing a tree. All of these kind of things. Digging is a form of heavy work and so it's all applying force and defying gravity. Pushing is applying force away from the body. Pulling, applying force toward the body. And carrying, moving while supporting something. And so these three things are a really big part of sensory integration and physical development. I mentioned heavy work in previous episodes but really for sensory integration there's a lot going on here because they're understanding their proprioceptive system, the awareness of their body in space. They're building their vestibular system, their sense of balance. They're learning to understand their interoceptive system, all of the feelings that they have going on inside of them. Plus they're building muscle strength and control, hand-eye coordination and not just hand-eye, hand-foot coordination, visual tracking skills, listening skills are often involved in heavy work and on and on it goes. And so there's a lot of good learning here going on. And the problem of course is heavy work requires kids to be up and moving and active and a lot of early learning programs are adverse to kids actively engaging their bodies. I mean, look, they might have scheduled physical activity time. Maybe it's free play out in the playground. Maybe it's adult-led calisthenics.
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    18 分
  • PHQP_0013 Navigating Change

    PHQP_0013 Navigating Change
    2025/03/31
    In PHQP 0013_Navigating Change, Jeff serves up a quick yet insightful chat about tackling change—offering practical tips to turn anxiety into lasting change. Plus, a groan-worthy dad joke to cap it off. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0013 Navigating Change Episode Notes Free To Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life The Navigating Change Transcript Welcome to Playvolition HQ Podcast, I'm Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on with the show. So this is going to be a little bit of an abbreviated episode. I've I'm kind of crunched for time this week. I let it get away from me. And I've got to head out for a in-person gig in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I'm going from 75 here at the beach to I think the high temperature on my road trip, it's going to be 30 degrees. Kind of looking forward to it. I like a snowy cold Michigan. I don't know if it's going to be any snow, but looking forward to it. I say abbreviated episode because I've only got one thing on the topic. Although whoever knows how long it's going to go. Also, behind the scenes, this is the second time I've tried to record this episode because I was about seven minutes in when I realized I hadn't pushed record. And I've been making podcasts for over 12 years. So a little bit of a a learning curve still there for me. So our one and only topic this week is navigating changes and comfortable stages. So change is a challenge. Change is something that requires you to get out of your current state and do something different, do something new. And that can be that can be really challenging because it often leaves us feeling uncomfortable and anxious. And those are those are feelings that we like to avoid. And so we often put off change for just the fact that those things, those feelings might might pop into our day. And this goes for changing things up in your classroom, whether you're you're embracing rough and tumble play, which is also the title of Mike Huber's wonderful book. Or you're going from craftivities you see on Pinterest to a real process art station. Or the example we're going to walk through today is is starting putting together a mud kitchen in your classroom. You can deal with classroom stuff like that, or it comes into play in personal stuff, too, because I do a lot of trainings on on caregiver self-care. And one challenge for caregivers who are going from not taking care of themselves at all, investing very little time in self-care to making it a daily practice is it can get very uncomfortable. It can make them anxious. They're worried about failing. They're worrying about missing the day. They're they're beating themselves up because they didn't start this earlier. And and so it can come with a lot of discomfort in starting those changes. But we want changes to last, right? So we have to learn to navigate those feelings of anxiety or discomfort or whatever, whatever you're feeling with change, with feeling happening when change is going on for those things to to last. We have to work through it. So a caregiver example, right? So you're a caregiver. You decide you're going to start your you're going to start exercising more because, you know, you know, you need to and, you know, it's good for you. And so you decide, maybe I'm going to start walking three miles every day after work. That's great. Great, great idea. And you do it the first day, maybe the second day, maybe the third day you go a mile and a half, maybe the fourth day it's on your calendar. You miss completely because you got home from work late and you weren't feeling it, and so you skipped it. And then you start beating yourself up. I'm a failure. I knew this wasn't going to work. I shouldn't have tried this. And you let those feelings take over and you give up. People do it all the time. I've done it a bazillion times.
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    18 分
  • PHQP_0012 Children Want Power

    PHQP_0012 Children Want Power
    2025/03/24
    In PHQP_0012 Children Want Power, Jeff explores how kids crave control and choice in their world. On this Playvolution HQ Podcast episode, Jeff gears up for a 50-mile walk challenge, wraps up the core values series with kids’ need for power, and unpacks the five principles of counting. He also urges trusting kids to organize dramatic play, recommends Free Range Kids, and wraps things up with a tasty Dad Joke of the Week! Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0012 Children Want Power Episode Notes Power Play Power Play Simplified Superhero Play: KAPOW, BLAMMMM, ZAP! Rough And Tumble Play Is Not Violent 10 Magnificent Reasons For Smashing And Mashing 7 Reasons Kids Choose Death Play Bones_0013 Power Struggles The 5 Principles Of Counting Trusting Kids To Organize Dramatic Play The Children Want Power Transcript Welcome to Playvolution HQ podcast. I'm Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on with the show. So, first up, 50 mile walk. So this is a thing I was reading not too long ago that back in the early 60s, this was actually a thing. People would go out and do 50 mile walks in a 24-hour period, what the goal was. And I guess President Kennedy did it. I don't know if it was before he became president or after. I think it was before he became president. Maybe he was president. I don't know. But then his brother went out and did it basically wearing loafers with his dog, went out and did a 50 mile walk in like 20 hours. And so I decided I'm going to give this a try because it sounded like a fun challenge. And it kind of bumps in the things we've talked about on the show. One is need. We need to all move more and that our brains like us to be in motion and to play because it's going to be grueling going out and walking 50 miles. Tasha, my wife, and I did an 18 mile walk a couple of months ago and that wasn't too bad. But this is going to be a real challenge. But for me, it's play because I got to figure out what gear I need. I'm going to, look, I've been looking at socks. I'm test driving some new socks, that kind of stuff. I think I'm going to get myself a camelback for water convenience because I figured out I'm going to need to drink about 300 ounces of water over the walking period. I decided I'm going to start like at 830 at night because that just seems logistically what's going to work out best for me. And that it's probably going to take between 16 and 20 hours for a 56 year old dude to do this. But I'm mentioning it here because this is part of the play too. Putting it out here in public means that I can't chicken out and do it. So I'm recording this in early March 2025. The plan is to do it sometime in mid April. So stay tuned and see if I follow through. Next up, topic number one, last of our core value series. And maybe we'll recap all 12 of them sometime. And maybe someday I'll come up with more. But here we go. Children want power. And I think a lot of the problems we have in early learning programs comes down to power struggles between adults and kids. And so if we can kind of see through the lens of power, sometimes we can avoid behavior, quote unquote, problems with kids. Sometimes we can do more to support children's efforts to lead their own learning. So power equals control over their world. And when you're two or three or four or 11 years old, you don't always feel that powerful in your life or your world very often. There's always somebody bigger telling you what to do and when to do it and how to do it. And so power struggles become a big part of childhood in a lot of ways. And by giving kids power, I'm not talking about giving them total control over everything because they're just physiologically and cognitively unready for that. But there are a lot of ways we can look at giving them more power in their life. Because what it really boils down to is power equals choice. This is one of the values of a real play.
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    17 分
  • PHQP_0011 Continuity Matters

    PHQP_0011 Continuity Matters
    2025/03/17
    In PHQP-0011 Continuity Matters, Jeff highlights the power of stable caregiving for kids’ wellbeing and learning. Plus, he marvels at a kid’s trash bag STEM play, revisits actor-observer bias pitfalls, explores fostering iterative learning, hunts for a string game collaborator, and more. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0011 Continuity Matters Episode Notes Continuity Of Care Continuity Of Care The Hidden Impact Of Actor-Observer Bias In Early Learning 6 Helpful Ways To Support Self-Directed Learning Through The Iterative Process The Continuity Matters Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I'm Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on with the show. So, trash bag play, trash bag stem play. I teased this at the end of the last episode. Again, this is something I observed recently. A kid, probably 11 years old, he's doing his after-school chores. His job is to go carry the trash out. In his walk from his front door to the trash receptacle, he's got this white hefty trash bag. I don't know if it was a hefty brand. It could have been another brand. He's got this trash bag, and he's doing all this stuff with it. He's lifting it up high with one hand and lifting up it as high as he can with the other hand. And then he's doing this thing with his wrist, moving his wrist back and forth, and the bag will spin one way and then unwind and spin the other way. And then he's doing this full loop, his arm swinging around in a circle and looping the bag up in the air. And I'm just waiting for it to hit the ground and splatter everywhere, but it doesn't. And this is delightful to see because what this dude is doing, and he might not know it specifically, he's doing STEM experimentation. He's practicing with the physics of trash bags and the laws of motion. And that's kind of cool to see because kids are wired for this kind of stuff. It's built into them. And so instead of creating lessons, even for kids of that age, to push these ideas on them, we might be better off creating environments that support their exploration and discovery of these ideas. So there's that, something to think about. The trash bag STEM play observation was a lot of fun. Topic number one, this is our penultimate core value, part 11. I think next week will be the last one, at least for a while. Number 11 is continuity matters. So what we're talking about here is continuity of care. There's some links in the episode notes about this. Familiarity breeds confidence. Young children need a stable set of caregivers, optimally. And I know that's not always possible, but best practices is we want to have kids with the fewest amount of caregivers as possible because children are emotionally dependent on the people taking care of them. And if there's too many of them, they get kind of confused and their behavior expectations between one and another is kind of hard to understand and navigate. And if people are always coming and going in their lives, it can get emotionally confusing. But when we're with a core group of caregivers in our early years, we build confidence in them because we build these deeper relationships. And this is one of the tragedies of high turnover in early learning programs is that it doesn't allow children to build these long-term relationships with their caregivers. Trust fuels learning. And so if you have a caregiver that you have a solid long-term relationship with, you are more likely to learn because it's lower level Maslow stuff. First, we have to feel safe, secure, nurtured, loved. We have to eat. We have to have the right amount of sleep and all of that before we're ready to take a learning risk. And if we don't have a dependence or a comfort level with our caregivers, it's really hard to take that learning risk as a young person or even as an adult. It's easier to learn from somebody you trust. When stress rises, learning drops.
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    18 分
  • PHQP_0010 The Benefits Of Mixed-Age Groups

    PHQP_0010 The Benefits Of Mixed-Age Groups
    2025/03/10
    In PHQP 0010_The Benefits Of Mixed-Age Groups, Jeff champions the developmental perks of diverse age play. In this Playvolution HQ Podcast episode, we discuss classic kid games, explore how mixed-age groups boost learning and calm chaos, touch on Vygotsky’s ZPD and MKO, and dig into jungle gym history. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0010 The Benefits Of Mixed-Age Groups Episode Notes Classic Kid Games Lilian G. Katz | The Benefits of Mixed-Age Grouping The Case for Mixed-Age Grouping in Early Education Babies And Beyond | Managing Mixed-Age Groups Benefits and Challenges Of Mixed-Age Preschool Mixed-Age Groups in Early Childhood Education The Benefits Of Mixed-Age Groups Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ Podcast. I'm Jeff Johnson. Thanks for for pushing play. On with the show. So, first up, the face slap game. I saw this at a bus stop the other day while I was out walking my pup Gigi in the morning. A couple boys, 8, 10, 11, 12 years old, are standing around. There's three of them. They're playing the face slap game, which is, basically, here's how you play. You take turns slapping your buddy in the face. And the slapper is trying to, you know, make it hurt when they slap their buddy in the face. And the slapee, in receiving the slap, is trying to be stoic and suck it up. And the way this game goes is you just take turns slapping each other in the face, and it hurts. And, for some reason, it's fun when you're a boy of that age. I was happy to see this game being played in 2025 because I played it hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles away decades earlier in the 70s and 80s. So, this is kind of a pervasive thing. This is something little boys do when they get together. And it's a game. It's play because it's self-chosen. It's self-selected. If it was somebody just walking up and slapping somebody, it would be a violent act. But because these dudes chose to engage in this activity, hey, guys, let's slap each other. There's that consent there, which makes it a playful act. So that, again, there's that playful aggression that we've talked about in past episodes. And speaking of play and children's games, that kind of leads us into topic one for this episode, almost if it was planned that way. Topic one is classic kids' games. So on the Playvolution HQ website, years ago, I started a little corner of the site to collect these kinds of classic kids' games. And I got some of them up there, and then I got distracted by other things with the site. But now I'm getting back to adding these. And probably for that couple of years, I'm going to be adding a couple a week, probably, and then revamping the ones that have been there before. So I've added the face slap game to the list. The other day, I was out, and I saw a couple of kids playing what we used to call bat-back. A kid on each end of a field has got a baseball bat, and they're just taking turns batting the ball back to each other. Not a game that adults would probably organize, but it's something kids do. Also, recently, we saw kids playing a game called, we used to call it freeze. And one kid, usually a younger kid, was in charge. And every time they yelled, freeze, the older kids had to stop whatever they were doing. They had to just freeze there until they were unfrozen. And so there's like this 6-year-old, and she's commanding probably an 11-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl. And the boy's bouncing his basketball. And as soon as she yells, freeze, he has to freeze in mid-dribble. And then the ball kind of stops and rolls away. And she giggles gloriously. And he's trying to keep from smirking because he made this little kid laugh playing this silly game. So anyway, we're collecting these classic playground games. You know, kickball, dodgeball, all those kind of things. Cat's Cradle, the yardy things. And right now I've got a list of,
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    17 分
  • PHQP_0009 Caregiver Self-Care Is Important

    PHQP_0009 Caregiver Self-Care Is Important
    2025/03/03
    In PHQP_0009 Caregiver Self-Care Is Important, Jeff stresses the vital role of recharging for caregivers. On this Playvolution HQ Podcast episode, learn why self-care isn’t selfish but an investment in emotional energy for kids, colleagues, and loved ones. Plus, a DIY explosion activity with film canisters, seven adult responses to child-led play, and innovative loose parts use. Plus, a gravity-defying Dad Joke of the Week! Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0009 Caregiver Self-Care Is Important Episode Notes Lots Of Self-Care Related Links 7 Common Adult Responses to Child-Led Play Fun With Explosions The Caregiver Self-Care Is Important Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I'm Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play...on with the show. So, I was really looking forward to starting the show off with a little bit of conversation about how I really love watching concrete buckle and decay and crack over time. But that got pushed out of the way because a hunk of concrete I was watching buckle and crack and break down over time made a big change and a couple of hunks of it broke loose. And I was all excited to talk about that. But then I noticed on a recent walk that they were gone. And then I saw them and I was delighted because as we talked about one, play grows from inside the player and two, loose parts are awesome. A couple of neighborhood kids picked them up and they were using these hunks of concrete as bases at the local playground for a kid version of baseball. Now, it wasn't baseball because they didn't have nine people to make, enough people to make out nine people on each team and it was just five or six of them playing. But they were making it work because again, play comes from within child. And they found these, they found the bits and pieces they needed to make a field and play commenced and that's awesome. So play is sparked by the minds of the children playing and loose parts are awesome. Just a little bit of follow up on those two things here. We'll talk about my joy of observing concrete fall apart later. Topic one, core values. Part nine, like I mentioned last time, we're talking about caregiver self-care and its importance. Because the work of a caregiver is to be emotionally available, to be present in the moment with the children. That means being right here, right now. And that's really difficult. We talked about that in one of the earlier episodes about being right here, right now as being the core. But what that does is it takes a lot of emotional labor. There's plenty of physical labor in early learning but a big part of it is that emotional labor because we're giving our emotional resources away all the time and it's a limited resource. And so we're doling it out little bit by little bit by little bit all day long to the kids in our care, to our coworkers, to the parents we work with in our program, maybe to the administrators we work with. We're trying to bring some home to our sweetie pie and maybe our children and dog, your house plant. You wanna be present for them too. And it's really easy to get drained. And it turns out that professional caregivers are often very, very good at the doing of the emotional labor but they fall short when it comes to the flip side of that, the taking care of themselves side. And that can really be a problem because if you don't fill your cup up again, you run out of resources to give. And one reason I hear for caregivers not taking care of themselves, I've written two books of this topic and I've been talking about it for over 20 years in trainings is sometimes people feel selfish but self-care isn't selfish. Self-care is an investment in yourself and in the investment in the quality of work that you do with other people and the quality of the relationships you have with the people important to you. So we need to really make time for that self-care. You can't pour from an empty cup.
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    18 分