Dramatic play allows children to explore their big emotions and the emotions of others in a safe setting
For people my age, our neighborhoods served that role, but today’s children are growing up in a world of daily commutes, scheduled playdates, and screen time instead of outdoor play with the neighborhood children. As a result, both children and their parents have grown alienated from the neighborhoods, their natural communities, something that shows up in our hunter-gatherer brains in the form of anxiety and depression, which are showing up in today’s children in epidemic levels.
So the WEEKDAYS team has guided you through the paperwork and you’re now in business. Now what? In the education world, we call it the curriculum, which in essence is the answer to the question: What are we going to do with our time together?
Preschools are often the first community a child knows beyond their own family. It’s here that they make their first friends, resolve their first conflicts, and come to understand that their individual needs must be balanced with the needs of others.
The process of making art is a vital one: it is how we explore our world from the inside out, as opposed to outside in, the way scientists do.
You can spend hundreds on a sensory table, but that’s an unnecessary expense for a small in-home provider. Inexpensive plastic tubs do the job just as well. As for what goes in the tubs, the possibilities are endless, keeping in mind that supervision is necessary, especially for children who are still prone to putting everything in their mouths.
Play-based education, in which children spend the bulk of their days coming together around their own projects, is the natural preparation for this aspect of the real world. It’s an opportunity for children to cooperate, collaborate, negotiate, and bicker, all of which is an ideal, hands-on preparation for the future. Circle time is an important part of that preparation.
Neuroscientists are now scientifically proving that we “think” with our fingers, our eyes, our ears, our noses, and our tongues, indeed every cell in our bodies.
At its core, the theory of loose parts is a theory about democracy, about self-governance, and the rights and responsibilities of both individuals and groups to come together to shape their world according to their own vision
Breaking bread together is as old as humanity. It’s a time to tell our stories, to create connections, and to reaffirm the idea of who “we” are together.
Most days aren't so hard, but there are moments in every day when things don't go the way we want or expect them to and then, on top of getting along with the other people, there are our own emotions with which we must deal.
Play dough is a vehicle for imaginative play.
To put it bluntly, we want them to feel badly about hurting or scaring or otherwise violating another person, but we don’t want it to be because they’ve made us angry or because we are going to punish them, but rather because they have caused pain to another person. In other words, we want them to learn empathy.
Important Note from our WEEKDAYS Founder, Shauna Causey