Implementing Free Play

On today's episode, we will be talking about how to begin implementing Free Play into your program, classroom, or home.

To download the infographic for today’s episode, please visit: http://kskits.org/kids-these-days-podcast-0

To check out KCCTO’s LIVE VIRTUAL Training offerings, please visit:https://kccto.org/shop/

To learn more about honoring and acknowledging native land, please visit: https://usdac.us/nativeland  

To learn the names of the tribes on who’s land you current live, text your city and state to 907.312.5085.

To learn more about each specific tribe, please visit: https://native-land.ca/ 

Kids These Days is a co-production of the KCCTO-KITS Infant Toddler Specialist Network (ITSN) and KCCTO Workforce Development (WFD) programs.
The KCCTO-KITS Infant-Toddler Specialist Network is a program of the Kansas Child Care Training Opportunities, Inc. (KCCTO) and the university of Kansas Life Span Institute at Parsons. The Workforce Development Project is a program of KCCTO.  Each program is supported through a grant from the Kansas Department For Children And Families’ Child Care And Early Education Services. However, information or opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the agency and no official endorsement should be inferred.

To learn more about the Infant Toddler Specialist Network, please visit: http://kskits.org/technical-assistance-0. 

To learn more about KCCTO and Workforce Development, please visit: https://kccto.org/ 

Contact us via email at – kidsthesedayspod@gmail.com 

Follow and tag us on Instagram & Facebook @kidsthesedayspod & Twitter @ktdpod

Theme music credit: Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3843-hackbeat
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 

AD music credit: Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3944-jingle-bells  
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Kids These Days is a co-production of the KCCTO-KITS Infant Toddler Specialist Network (ITSN) and KCCTO Workforce Development (WFD) programs.
The KCCTO-KITS Infant-Toddler Specialist Network is a program of the Kansas Child Care Training Opportunities, Inc. (KCCTO) and the university of Kansas Life Span Institute at Parsons. The Workforce Development Project is a program of KCCTO.  Each program is supported through a grant from the Kansas Department For Children And Families’ Child Care And Early Education Services. However, information or opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the agency and no official endorsement should be inferred.

To learn more about the Infant Toddler Specialist Network, please visit: http://kskits.org/technical-assistance-0.

To learn more about KCCTO and Workforce Development, please visit: https://kccto.org/

Contact us via email at – kidsthesedayspod@gmail.com

Follow and tag us on Instagram & Facebook @kidsthesedayspod & Twitter @ktdpod

Music credit: Hackbeat by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3843-hackbeat License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey, it's Sarah, and this is Kids These Days, a podcast brought to you by funding through the Kansas Department for Children and Families. Now that you've had a week or two to let that not so scary idea of free play stew in your brain, today we're going to talk about how you can begin to implement free play into your program or classroom or home. And I promise, just like free play itself, implementing free play is not so scary either. All it takes is three little things. First, positive, supportive, and appropriate adult interactions. Remember that one of the hallmarks of developmentally appropriate free play is that it requires adult interaction that is based upon the needs and interests of children. We're talking the teacher taking responsibility for stimulating, directing, and supporting children's development and learning by providing the experiences that each child needs. Secondly, an environment, materials, and schedule that allow for and support free play. Like we talked about before, that free play is not rigidly or strictly thematic assigned Forester time. And the third is intentionally planning for free play. So let's talk more about utilizing positive, supportive, and appropriate adult interactions to implement free play into your program, classroom, or home. So positive, supportive, and appropriate adult interactions might mean different things to each of us, especially when we're thinking about all the ways that we interact with children throughout the day. Think diapering, mealtime, guiding when they're feeling big emotions, hand washing, etc. So we want to be sure when we're beginning to implement that free play, that as teachers and parents, as adults, that we're employing a range of strategies to help children build new skills and understandings. So that might look like asking open-ended questions, can you tell me about what you're making? And then giving them the time and space to process the question and answer it before we start talking again. It also looks like offering cues or suggestions and then modeling how to solve problems or work with others instead of just telling them. I wonder why the block tower fell over. Could you build it in a different way? Would you like my help? Maybe adding complexity or challenge to activities and materials. Maybe giving a baby a block to hold in each hand and showing her how to bang them together. Or bringing in smaller Legos for your toddlers that have been using those big duplos. And providing support for children to work and play together. Remember, we talked about those stages of play where those toddlers are doing that parallel play, they're playing next to each other, and that we don't really see that truly high-level cooperative play until they're five or six. So we have to help them learn how to collaborate, work through ideas and solutions, cooperate, negotiate, take turns, solve problems. And we can do some of this within a wide range of formats that allows us to engage and interact with children in different ways during free play. Like large groups. This is usually a whole group, a class meeting, circle time. It's where we're sharing experiences as a whole. And this gives children opportunities to practice skills like talking to a group, listening to others, responding appropriately, taking turns. Within these large groups, please be alert to the children's cues. Don't keep going if they're not interested anymore. Just because you plan this really awesome activity that you're in love with doesn't mean that they are. And another format could be small groups. So usually we're thinking three to six children. And we know in toddlers, right? toddlers do the swarming behavior. So small groups don't always happen in those toddler rooms, but sometimes. So that three to six kids, this offers you as the teacher a more focused experience, a way to engage the children even more in that problem solving or maybe applying a previously learned concept to a new situation. It allows you to give each child a little more attention and support during free play. Like maybe if you have a few kids in the block area, navigating how to negotiate and take turns with the materials of I want to build this, or teaching them that only the builder can knock things down, you have to ask first. And then we have those one-on-one interactions between peers and between teacher and child, opportunities where you maybe get to sit in the library area with that little person and read a book or do a puzzle with them. Or maybe, maybe you have a non-napper. And while I get it, nap time is a time to do duties that you aren't able to get done during the day, but you're still on the clock during nap time. And if you have a little person that doesn't nap, take advantage of that beautiful, uninterrupted, one-on-one time with that child. Get to know their interest, get to know what motivates them, what brings them joy. How can you utilize that time that is given to you to get to know that child and help them grow? Which leads us into yet another piece of this supportive relationships and interactions during free play, is that we want to balance out teacher-guided learning and child-guided learning. So, what do we mean by that? Teacher-guided learning is where we observe together data, reflectify meaning, and then create activities and provide materials that scaffold children's learning. Another way to say it, it's based upon the teacher's goals, but shaped by the children's active engagement. And then child-guided learning is based on the children's interests and actions with strategic teacher support. We want to involve them in the planning process. Ask them what they want to learn about. Listen to their answers, to what they're talking about. What are they excited about? What brings them joy? And be willing to put your really cool planned activity on hold to explore that cool bug that they just found on the playground. So after this short break, we're going to talk about how to provide an environment, materials, and schedule that allow for free play.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Are you a center director with New Year's resolutions to be a better leader? Join us for the Kansas Childcare Training Opportunities Directors Alliance monthly meetings. We'll cover the topics of promoting teamwork in January, staffing practices in February, and coaching in March. You are sure to find some, if not many, useful ideas, tips, and tricks to build a great team, as well as privileged access to our online community of practice. Not only will you get 1.5 KDHE clock hours for attending each training, but we have several ongoing avenues to stay connected with your peers across the state. You aren't in this alone. For more details and to register for the free online trainings, visit www.kccto.org backslash shop backslash. We hope to see you there.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

What does an environment, materials, and schedule that allow for and support free play look like? For one, it looks like giving children time and space. I know you heard me talk about time and space and grace and many other episodes, but when we're talking about free play, I'm specifically talking about providing children at least one hour of uninterrupted free play per day. Not an hour total built up through the day, one hour all at one time. And in a full-day program, I would expect to see an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. Children need ample time and opportunity to investigate what sparks their curiosity, to figure out how things work, not assigning kids to play in areas for a specific amount of time and then rotating. Instead, I want to challenge you to allow children to pick where they want to play. Let them investigate what sparks their curiosity. At least one hour uninterrupted per day. When children are allowed to choose their play and it's uninterrupted, it allows children to get deeply involved in an activity and sustain it at a more complex level. So when we talk about time and space, let's talk more about space. We want to make sure that our environment is arranged so that all children can play freely and safely. My rule, if I can see it, touch it, I should be able to play with it. And I get it, we have limited space in a lot of the places where we care for children. You have materials as a teacher that need to be in the classroom but not be touched. So here's my thing, put them up high. Because if I can see it, touch it, I should be able to play with it. It is in my environment. And when we arrange a play area so that all children can play freely and safely, we want to make sure that we're accommodating for mixed ages. Say you have some non-mobile babies up to some mobile babies or even some toddlers. You want to make sure that you have a protected infant space. It should be a very small space where you can place the non-mobile infant while you are, say, changing diapers or prepping a meal and can't be right there with them. Or making sure that you have gross motor area for your ones and twos and threes that are starting to climb. And we also want to make sure that we are taking into consideration the total activity time spent in each space. So what do I mean by that? How much time do you spend in group or circle time? Probably less than 30 to 45 minutes per day. So then it should not take up a quarter of your environment. How much time do you nap a day? Maybe one to two-ish hours. Don't plan your entire room setup around nap time. Remember, you can always move shelves. How much time do you spend eating? Maybe three to four times a day. Don't make the tables the main focus of your environment. Work those tables into dramatic play, art, sensory. Your circle time, that area can also be music and movement. Make your environment work for you so that free play, that one hour of uninterrupted play, is the focus of your room. And within that environment and that space, we want it to be welcoming to all. We want to reflect the diversity of the community and society in which those children live. We want to include cultural aspects of the children in your care. But we want to make sure that those materials and any activities are based on what that child experiences at home, not this commercialized idea of diversity or culture, but of what that child actually experiences at home that can be shared with the other people that are part of their life at school. Because when we are diverse and culturally responsive, that promotes children's positive self-identity, helps them to respect and appreciate similarities and differences among people. So you want to be sure to include parents in the selection of those diverse cultural family-like materials. Photos, books, play items, songs, stories. We want them to be authentic to what that child experiences at home, and that there are no offensive stereotypes present, not materials that are deemed cultural or diverse commercially. And we want to create interest areas and furnish them with materials that are based on our program goals and knowledge children's varying interests and needs. Within that environment material and schedule, I want you to think back to past episodes where we've talked about transitions and planning for those within your day. That's another part of free play, where we've talked about using timers, right? Another great thing to do during free play, think taking turns. We want to make sure that we have our environmental visual prompts that we talked about during the transition episode and many other episodes. You know, how do I play on the climber? What are the rules for the climber? How do I take care of babies in the dramatic play area? How do I clean up after painting? These are all picture boards that you can make for children. And we want to make sure that our environment as a whole, that we're looking for blind spots, that we're looking for running paths, that we're looking for unsafe things in our environment. Once you make an environmental change, you want to leave it for at least two to three weeks. Unless, of course, there's a major safety issue, then please change that. But when you make those changes to your environment, you want them to be there for a while so children begin to understand them, to get deeply involved with them. Just like the argument we make for an hour of uninterrupted play, we want children to experience that environment consistently for at least two to three weeks. So I want to wrap this up by briefly addressing the third piece in the implementing free play puzzle. Intentionally planning to support free play. The long and short of this is observe your children to gather information about their strengths, needs, and interests, reflect to find meaning in that information. What do my kids know? What do I want them to know? Where are they developmentally? And then plan developmentally appropriate activities that answer those questions. I would encourage all of you to check out the live virtual training offerings on the Casito webpage, see the link in the show notes, and keep an eye out for future offerings of supporting free play through intentional planning starting in January of 2021. As we enter into this season of giving thanks, Rudy and I want to acknowledge the displacement and general mistreatment Indigenous peoples have suffered. And we really encourage you to visit the links in the show notes to learn more about how you can honor and acknowledge Indigenous peoples. We hope you all have a relaxing rest of your week, either with extended family or in your immediate family bubble. Stay safe and wash your hands. Kids These Days is a co-production of the Casito Kids Infant Toddler Specialist Network and Casito Workforce Development Programs. These programs are supported through a grant from the Kansas Department for Children and Families, Child Care and Early Education Services. However, information or opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the agency, and no official endorsement should be inferred. If you have questions, comments, suggestions, or want to share your practice related to this or a previous episode, please email us at kidsthesedayspod at gmail.com and follow us on Instagram and Facebook at KidsThees Days Pod and on Twitter at KT Pod. Be sure to check out the infographic and other resources for this episode in the show notes. And don't forget to rate review and hit subscribe. This episode was written, recorded, and edited by Sarah Holmes. Infographics by Rudy Benavides. Music track Hack Beat by Kevin McLeod. Add music track Jingle Bells by Kevin McLeod.