Food plays an integral role in our lives. The food we eat is intertwined with culture/traditions and many of our favorite memories are associated with gathering during special celebrations to enjoy food. By exploring and learning about different or familiar foods from around the world children can learn a lot about a particular culture or feel empowered by being represented. We have been reading books about unique dishes typically eaten when celebrating Lunar New Year around the world (China, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Korea, etc). We set out a tuff tray play invitation where the children can explore and create the different dishes through sensory, loose parts, and dramatic play. We provided dishes, play food,  loose parts (wood cookies, wood bits, bark, flat marbles, cellophane), rice, string noodles, utensils, bowls, pots and pans. The children were invited to play, create, explore, and experience Lunar New Year dishes from around the world. Since young children learn best through play– this type of play allows children to perform/process feelings, gain exposure to new things, learn new concepts and gain exposure, test their own understanding of the world around them, feel seen when their culture is represented, mimic or model past experiences, all while providing the space to honor their greatest skills: imagination, creativity, curiosity, wonder, and PLAY. When we are inclusive about celebrating and exposing all cultures in classrooms or our homes year round, from a young age, the more understanding, respect, exposure, acceptance, and so on we provide for everyone within our communities. There is so much beauty in the traditions of cultures from around the world, not only do children deserve to experience it but for everyone to be seen, represented, and empowered.

Pinch of Love Sensory +Loose Parts Dramatic Play// The story Pinch of Love by  Barry Timms  (Author),  Tisha Lee  (Illustrator) is about celebrating love that comes through baking, cooking, and sharing food through the warm bond of a diverse community. After reading the book we wanted to integrate the literacy experience by inviting the children to bake with love just like the special moments in the book.   To set this tuff tray play up we provided expired sprinkles that we had left over from cookie decorating a while back, measuring cups, baking trays, tea pots, cups, ladles, pots, pans, whisks, acrylic and wooden hearts, and pretend deserts. The children were invited to make, create, play, and bake a pinch of love however their heart desired.  The beauty of play in early childhood is its versatility and the wide range of opportunities it can provide. This specific invitation explores sensory, loose parts, and dramatic play all in one. When we provide children with a rich and welcoming environment where we honor their imagination, curiosity, and wonder where learning will flourish naturally all through the power of play. These invitations are merely set up in the environment to ignite and spark new or current interests, while also exposing them to a variety of materials and new concepts.  “When ideas meet with hands, extraordinary things happen.  Thoughts give shape to the materials and the materials remodels the thoughts and then the things we do grow along with our own growing ."  Salvador Allende Preschool Identity Book

Icy Hearts & Shapes STEM Exploration// Introducing children to different hands-on experiences in environments that young children are both enveloped & engaged in their own exploration as they discover & enjoy #STEM concepts is truly fascinating. Open ended explorations help children get exposed to & become familiar, while beginning to understand the properties & features of shapes in a way that is enticing. So how do we motivate children to love learning even when it is something they may not be interested in like shapes? Through intrinsic motivation. When we elicit their curiosity in an engaging way, the information sticks because their intrinsic motivation is activated. How do you get the intrinsic motivation activated? By giving children time & encouragement to play & the freedom of making their own decisions about how they play. Teaching young children through worksheets, flashcards, & memorization is a type of learning that is pushed by extrinsic motivation. Research shows that this type of learning has been proven to be detrimental to the child’s attitude towards learning and school, because it is rote learning. They are simply memorizing information based on repetition which leads to lack of comprehension & retaining the concepts. Exposing children to shapes where they are given agency to explore freely, honors their intrinsic motivation through igniting their curiosity and creativity. This type of learning sticks. Using the power of discovery, wonder, and curiosity in our classroom environment (indoors and outdoors), is how a child learns their alphabet, numbers, shapes, colors etc. on their own timelines. When this is made possible the child will learn these concepts with ease and the knowledge will stick.  This invitation to explore was created by simply freezing colored water (Colorations liquid watercolors, bicolor, tempera paint) in different shaped molds. The children were invited to explore, build, and create with the icy shapes.  "If it hasn't been in the hand and body, it can't be in the brain." Bev Boss

Black History Month presents a wonderful opportunity to discuss and expose race, civil rights, a rtists, musicians, authors, food, public figures, and so on  to celebrate the  groundbreaking impact that Black History paved for so many.  Educating children from a young age about the many achievements of Black History and how it has shaped cultures worldwide, provides for concrete learning experiences that permit children to build an understanding that will impact their learning, attitudes, and beliefs about diversity and multicultural education. One of our Artists of the Month is Kehinde Wiley, who is the African-American painter who is best known for portraits that feature African Americans in the traditional settings of old paintings with naturalistic brightly colored flowery backgrounds. After talking about who he is and his artwork along with looking at what he has created, we invited the children to do a Collaborative Canvas Collage. First the children were invited to paint layers of paint on a canvas. Next they were invited to draw portraits of people. Lastly they were invited to freely glue flowers and greenery around the portraits just like Kehinde Wiley.  Most of us know that art is important for children. But beyond why it is important for them to create art it is just vital to expose children to famous artists. Art connects us all. It can take us through history, introduce us to other cultures, the world around us, and to ourselves. Therefore the more a child is exposed to the arts, the more techniques they are aware of, the more they can problem solve to think critically, the more they can creatively express themselves, the more accepting they are, and the more beauty they can see in the world around them. Art is one of the fundamental components of what makes us ALL uniquely human.   Here are links to other invitations to explore Black History Month.

The story Amy Wu and the Patchwork Dragon    written by Kat Zhang & illustrated by Charlene Chua which are part of an amazing series . In the story Amy Wu is asked to make a dragon during school and she gets stuck in a rut but her family comes to her rescue to create the perfect dragon. After reading this story to extend the literacy experience the children were invited to create a collaborative dragon.  To create the body of the dragon we provided poster paper , Bio Color Colorations Metallic and Fluorescent Paint , and slinkies as their painting tools. The children were invited to paint with the slinkies and they were so excited to use an out of the norm tool.  When a child uses a new tool to paint, their creative juices flow as they test and experiment a variety of new ways to paint. Through the process they also observe all the ways the slinky moves and bounces as it creates prints on the paper. It also makes for an interesting way for the child to experience how high/low/fast/slow the slinky moves when using their body ( fine + gross motor skills) to maneuver the tool. The whole process challenges the child cognitively and creatively to think and create in new ways all while having fun! The second part was to create the other body parts (head, wings, tail, etc.) We provided large Texas snowflakes aka large coffee filters. First we squeezed different designs/patterns on one side and asked the children to fold the snowflake in half, rub the paint around with their fingers/hands, and slowly open the paper. As they opened the paper they were completely enamored by being able to see the paint transform which enhances their understanding of cause and effect, recognize colors, and continue to ignite their curiosity and wonder through art. Next week we will have this dragon dance around our Annual Lunar New Year Parade. Here are more ways to explore Lunar New Year Through Invitations.

We have started gearing up for the Lunar New Year of the Dragon first by reading & looking at books about Dragons, showing them the costumes/puppets used in the pardes, and then setting up some wondrous invitations to create! While children’s books open children’s eyes to differences, actual experiences such as creating art have the most profound influence on what children think and believe throughout the rest of their lives. The beauty of learning about celebrating different cultures is that it can help children understand, respect similarities and differences, and they understand who they are in context of race, ethnic group, culture, religion, language and familial history. It also provides children with meaningful worldly information and can introduce concepts from anthropology, history, religion, geography, etc.  Whether it is celebrating the art, music, food, symbols, traditions, and so on of a culture, exposing children to different elements of a culture provides more knowledge and understanding of the world while making every child feel seen and heard in their community.   Lunar New Year, which includes many Asian Countries, is filled with festivities, customs , and plenty of feasts where the  arrival of spring and the start of a fresh year is based. The upcoming year’s dragon sign is perhaps the most popular zodiac creature, associated with a host of positive qualities such as nobility, wealth and wisdom.  Here are two ways we created Lunar New Year Dragons.  1. Recycled Dragon Process Art: We created a dragon with recycled items, provided paint, golden stickers, colorful confetti, and glue. The children were invited to paint and create!  2. STEM + Loose Parts Dragon: We provided loose parts (party cups (small & large), translucent + colored pebbles, acrylic rocks, gem cubes, flat marbles, gold coins, lucky envelopes). The children were invited to create their own dragons or whatever they felt like creating.  Here is another way to create a Lunar New Year Dragon along with 11 other invitations.

After doing the  Invitation to Explore the Northern Lights last week the children were still talking about it so much that we invited them to continue their current interest by painting in a new way. We placed out our star projector  again to showcase what the Northern Lights would look like in real life, as well as looking real images and videos from around the world. The Northern Lights are also known as Auroral displays that appear in many colors, forms in patches or scattered clouds of shooting rays that light up the sky with an eerie glow. The bright lights are collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun that enter the earth's atmosphere and are seen above magnets poles of the northern and southern hemisphere. We provided glow and the dark acrylic paint, paint brushes, black flat canvases, standing easel, and invited the children to paint the dark. Did you know an easel (small or large) is  a brilliant piece of equipment for children to paint on that builds so many skills. Whether they are standing up or sitting, writing on vertical surfaces encourages and promotes their wrists to bend upwards the same way they do for writing. Since this is a more natural setting to improve their fine motor skills it will significantly help their handwriting skills in a developmentally appropriate manner.  Besides the endless benefits of creativity painting has, through regular exposure it truly helps build their hand and finger strength by allowing them to perform small, precise, movements and developing these skills will also improve their hand-eye coordination, tactile perception, focus, and concentration.

Did you know that the writing process begins long before a child even forms letters with a pencil. It involves building pre-writing skills (gross motor control, posture/core control, ability to cross the midline, bilateral coordination, pincer grasp, fine motor control, ability to form basic patterns), which is what we want any child to strive to build during the early years. To put it simply, teaching a child to write does not begin with letter formation, but rather by building all the pre-writing skills first. The early years are all about setting the foundation for the rest of a child’s education. Creating inviting and intentional ways for children to mentally, academically, and physically prepare for writing in open-ended ways helps get them ready through developmentally appropriate practices and engaging manner that ignites their curiosity and wonder for learning.  Today we let the children explore the formation and shape of lots of different lines. On butcher paper we drew (tempera sticks/oil pastels)/taped (washi tape) out a whole bunch of different lines and designs and provided arctic figurines so the children could have them trace the lines by "ice skating" with arctic figurines. When a child is invited to explore and play with open ended materials such as this, it gives them the opportunities to work on spatial awareness, exposes them to different formations of shapes/lines/designs/letters/numbers, attention to detail, enhancing their language skills as they communicate what they see or what they are doing in,  developing attention span, and ultimately they are enhancing/building those pre-writing skills listed above so that writing will come at ease once they are ready!

With all this recent wonderful winter play exploring cold habitats, arctic animals, and the chilly weather, a simple question from a child ignited this prehistoric invitation.  "Did Dinosaurs ever live in the snow?" The beauty of invitations that introduce new experiences and information is that it continues to ignite curiosity and spark questions that we as adults may not have answers to. Together, you can learn and grow about so much interesting information while honoring the child's interest.  "Our children can be our greatest teachers if we are humble enough to receive their lessons."  Most of the time we picture jungles, volcanoes, tropical islands, which make us think they were always in warmer climates. After researching we found that Dinosaurs have been discovered in every continent in cluding Antarctica & it has been found that Dinosaurs would have spanned a range of climates and seasons across every geographic latitude, likely including areas of snow & ice. These dinosaurs were called Polar Dinosaurs & were spiky, feathery, & beaked. They adapted to some of the harshest habitats with a stop & start growth pattern, so they were already biologically predisposed to surviving on less during the cold month & faster again during the summers. Since this was such a hit, the first go around we used shaving cream as snow in the tuff tray with dinosaurs, and loose parts (flat marbles, wood cookies, rocks, foraged leaves). The second time we did it with insta snow. And there we have it, an invitation that was ignited by a child's curious question led to SNOW MUCH FUN!

I'm so excited to announce that I will be presenting at Camp Renegade Play Virtual Summit! You can learn absolutely everything you’d ever want to know about the Free 4 day early childhood summit over here but as a quick overview: The summit will run from January 31 - February 3, 2024 Each day will be packed with amazing speakers who are ready to help you unpack these big, renegade play topics! A pop-up Facebook group where you’ll find fun camp games and challenges, connect with other early childhood educators, ask the speakers questions, and whatever else we come up with! YOU CAN WIN PRIZES TOO! You can attend the summit absolutely free, but you can choose to grab the VIP Camper All Access Pass at any time. The VIP Camper All Access Pass will give you an all-access pass to the summit: meaning you get all the videos for 365 days to watch and rewatch at your leisure, a professional development certificate for 20 hours, and lots of bonuses! The VIP Camper All Access Pass is currently being offered at an early bird price, and it will disappear for good once the summit is over, so start thinking about it now! Head over to the website to learn more and grab your free ticket.

The story  The Lights that Dance in the Night by Yuval Zommer  is a wonderful way to explore and learn about the Northern Lights that appear during the winter season. The book goes on a journey from space to earth showcasing the magic for animals and people living in the frozen lands. After reading the story we also showed images and videos about the Northern Lights. We talked about how they are also known as Auroral displays that appear in many colors, forms in patches or scattered clouds of shooting rays that light up the sky with an eerie glow. The bright lights are collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun that enter the earth's atmosphere and are seen above magnets poles of the northern and southern hemisphere. Before inviting them to explore the invitations we closed the lights and used our star projector to showcase what the northern lights would look like in real life.  Here are the two Northern Lights invitations:  1. Northern Lights Small World Play: The children were invited to explore the Northern Lights Polar Habitat in a tuff tray with  Glow Construction Blocks ,  Illuminated Sensory Glow Pebbles , rainbow tea lights ,   bottle brush trees ,   arctic anima ls,  and insta snow.  2. Invitation to Paint the Northern Lights:  The children were invited to paint the Northern lights on construction paper metallic bio color paint.

Today we read the story Glacier on the Move by  Elizabeth Rusch   (Author),  Alice Brereton  (Illustrator) which is about a glacier Flo who shows you what her life is like, what glaciers are, how they are formed/change shape, what kind of creatures live nearby,  and more fun scientific facts.  After reading the story we invited the children to come explore glaciers in the arctic through open-ended play and exploration. In a sensory bin we provided frozen glaciers mixed with liquid watercolors/tempera paint, water, insta snow, styrofoam shapes, and arctic animals. The children were invited to explore, play, imagine, reenact, and learn more about the world of glaciers.  Exploring these materials through open-ended play is a great way for extending literacy, language, imaginary play, and tactile play. Through this play they can reenact what they see/hear in stories, movies, shows, experiences, and environments around them to deepen their understanding of the world. This type of play can be defined as where children accept and assign roles, then act them out.  When children engage in this type of play they break through the walls of reality, use their imagination, pretend to be someone or something different from themselves, explore different worlds, and have actions to go along with the roles they have chosen to play. Play is an integral part of the developmental learning process by allowing children to develop skills in such areas as abstract thinking, literacy, math, & social studies, in a timely natural manner. They are able to play and manipulate a variety of materials and textures that stimulate their mind and body while deepening their connection and understanding of the world.