Play-based learning is the core on which all future learning and subjects will grow. Hi friends, and welcome. I'm your host AmyElizSmith. I'm a homeschool mom of three and have homeschooled each from the start. While I have a master's in elementary ed, I want to teach other mamas that you don't need a fancy degree to have the passion and knowledge to successfully educate your children from home. I hope to bring you encouragement to jump in and start your homeschool journey and provide my absolute best recommendations to help you begin your homeschool journey. Thanks for joining us along for this crazy, messy grace filled homeschool ride. Welcome back friends. I am so excited to talk to you about the importance of play today and how Reggio Amelia philosophy can be incorporated into your homeschool with your little ones. So play is the foundation of childhood learning. And for early childhood education, hopefully any educator maintains the belief that play-based learning is the core on which all future learning and subjects will grow. According to the American Academy for Pediatrics, children's developmental trajectory is critically mediated by appropriate, effective relationships with loving and consistent caregivers as they relate to children through play. When my son was four, I wrote extensively on what I observed about his play style and his learning style. At that time, I was a beginning blogger and I'm a former kindergarten teacher, so I liked to share on my blog all sorts of invitations to play and arts and crafts and learning letters and sounds that I gathered together for him in what we called tot school or preschool. Now I learned that my son, he didn't necessarily want to do what I put in front of him, and admittedly, I got frustrated that he was not dutifully attending to my invitations to play that I had created for him. But I took some time and I stepped back to think about this. What were my goals for how I wanted to teach my son? For what I wanted him to learn. So I wanted to be honoring to him and for him to learn in turn, to be honoring to others. I wanted him to be content and also to be an independent thinker and doer. He was definitely a natural born leader. I learned that from early on and I shared extensively how his learning style was different than what I expected or what I had been taught, maybe he should or shouldn't do, because it wasn't the typical standard of learning. I started to form my newfound thoughts into writings on my views and arts and crafts and what their purposes were, because I just saw a total difference in my son than what I had been taught for my kindergartners, for example. So this new philosophy that was new to me, it's not new. The Reggio Amelia inspired teaching and learning, it really inspired me to take a step back and to really see the child for who they are. Regio Amelia is a place in Italy and teachers in this location teach their students for at least three years at a time. And this is for early childhood. Now as a homeschool parent, we're doing the same. We are observing our children, we are taking cues from them. What do they enjoy? And really, and what I've consistently said is we are the most qualified to teach our own children because we know our own children best. In regards to my son, I knew where he had been. I knew his desires and his needs, and the more I studied him, I wanted to adapt his learning and his playtime to his needs. I wanted to anticipate his moves and be intentional with the activities that I chose for him. Playtime is so very important and again, it's important for it to be an open-ended experience versus what we typically see- the Pinterest friendly relationship to play, where the parent or the caregiver presents something to the child and they're expected to play with it or do something for them. But in Reggio, they don't have a preschool and they certainly don't have a full day kindergarten. Instead, all along, they encourage this open-ended learning and play. So what does this look like? I read from Julianne Worm, she wrote The Reggio Way and More working in the Regio Way, and I highly recommend these books. They were very eye-opening in learning about the Reggio approach and how it's different from a more structured, less creative environment that sometimes we in our own homes can create for our children when we're giving them non open-ended things. So I'll just pause there and say the plastic toys and the one game type toys, we've all had those in our homes. They're often gifted and they're very exciting cuz they're very colorful. And whenever we've had those in our homes, they have been fine and they are entertaining. But for what stands the test of time, they're really going to be those open-ended things. The blocks, the animals, the wooden kitchen set that can open your child's minds to all different types of play. So anytime that we have had the plastic race car track or the plastic toy that makes a certain sound, if you press a certain button, that's fine. And we've all been gifted those things. After my children were bored with those things. After a couple weeks, we definitely try to donate them. And that can also just help with parsing out your home and making sure your home is not just full of toys and the playroom you can't even walk through because it's so many toys. Regio Amelia, this is a philosophy started by a man named Lauras Malaguzzi, and he wrote a book called The Hundred Languages of Children, and he said this, "Stand aside for a while and leave room for learning. Observe carefully what children do and then if you have understood perhaps teaching will be different from before." Learning about Regio Amelia really helped give me a sigh of relief actually, because I realized that my son wasn't fitting the norm. For playtime or for activities I set before him or the arts and crafts, and that was okay and I wanted to begin to direct his learning into the kind of a project-based learning as he was three, four, and five years old. So that's when I'm talking about you today, because that child-directed time can be so good. We wanna nurture that play time and a caregiver or a parent can do so just with some very small tools. If the child is leading you, you can present some materials and manipulatives that can help them in that way. So here are just a couple examples of my son, when he was a spontaneous learner, when he read something in a book, he wanted to become that and he loved visiting the library about topics that he loved. And I tried to encourage all of those things and it was so fun to see him and in the same way my daughters but in, in different ways cuz every child is a different person. I saw them grow. So here's some things that my son enjoyed. He watched Toy Story, so then of course he wanted to become Buzz Light ear. So we created a jet pack for him from a cardboard box. He saw dragonflys outside. So he was a dragonfly for a couple days. He saw a spider. He wanted to be a spider. He saw a bee. He wanted to be a bee. He saw trains. Then he's the train he found out about Superman, and he was superman with super strength and super speed or he was a garbage truck or a magician. For many of these things, we would create projects based off of those things. When he started loving swords, we would create a Lego sword or he'd have a stick sword, and we made a little pouch for him to put his sword around his waist. And that became an obsession with Medieval times and Robinhood and even Peter Pan. I loved cultivating this environment where we would play together. He would play on his own and create these things that he wanted to be on his own. And that creativity can come from reading books and that individual playtime where there are open-ended things available, and I loved cultivating that environment for him and giving him the tools he needed. So I just wanna encourage you to not have anything planned. This is so freeing for us as parents that we can put together blocks out for our children. Find some little animals. I do love those little plastic animals. We have tons of those. And the child can create worlds with forts and blankets and sticks and be outside. And the rocks can be money and the flowers can be different things, and truly, if we don't make the other things available, like those one use toys or the plastic toys, then your child will create many different worlds. This playtime, like the AAP says, is so vital to their growth. And I like to just advocate because a lot of families when their child is put into these, and some headstart programs are okay because they are play-based, but they're stifled in the sense that they're put into classrooms with many one size fits all toys. And their brains and their curiosities are stifled because they're not able to just explore and create on their own through their curiosity. These small and loose parts, like I said about the blocks and the rocks and little sticks and strings. Those things can create so many different worlds from garbage trucks to bee hives, to spiders, to bugs. So much pretend play can be had outdoors, or when you bring those nature items indoors too. And it does not have to cost a lot of money. I know sometimes wooden toys, they can, but if you go to a garage sale, if you go to some local secondhand shops or Salvation Armies, you're gonna be able to find and be very choosy about what you find some great things that are secondhand. One thing we did love was a wooden train track with some little wooden Thomas the Train toys. And my son really did love those as well. And that's not necessarily very open-ended, but a lot of things could be done with that. In respecting our children for their desire to play and leaving them alone and not necessarily guiding their interests or guiding that playtime just sets such an amazing tone for their futures because as they're learning about the world around them and they're understanding their likes and dislikes and your attitude of respect towards that. It's going to help them grow into really strong and centered people. So for my son, I had to respect his dislikes. He did not wanna do the art that I might have wanted to have presented to him or the paper and pencil type activities that I might wanted to do, and I had to learn. I had to find out what was interesting to him. And I wanted to ask him about his work. I wanted to respect it, and I wanted to have him tell the story of what is he doing, what is he playing with? What are these worlds that have become? And if you've been around children, of course this may seem silly because you hear it all the time and you hear a child's wild imagination and it's so amazing. So back to that book, working in the Regio way, Julian Worm said, "Questioning develops a mindset that does not accept things at face value. This skepticism is crucial in creating an informed and active citizen. Teachers can anticipate where student agency may lead by virtue of their own experience." So these experiences that you're creating for your child or you're allowing your child to have really will help them lifelong. Now back to my daughters, they did enjoy arts and crafts or my putting more art things together for them. So they had more painting. They did more markering and that was so neat to see how very different every child can be. We just need to step back. We need to allow them to play and not direct it in those couple first years. Charlotte Mason and her writings, she expressed that children should not be taught formally until age six, and that is so vital for us to just take a step back and allow their mental capacities to grow through this place. So many things happen. Their imaginations grow. The fine motor skills, the gross motor skills, their brain neurons are just connecting like crazy through all of these activities and through learning cause and response and it's truly amazing to witness when we just take a step back and watch these things happen. And play is stifled. When we put our children in school too soon and we start pushing a curriculum far too soon, I'll admit that I did this with my son. I was doing the taught school. I was trying to really push those letters and those sounds with him. Now, it's not bad to expose a child to letters and sounds with blocks and have fun with them and read to them and point out letter sounds. Certainly the rhyming and the phonemic awareness activities can be so good. Nursery rhymes are vital. Reading poetry, reading good stories constantly is so important. But I'll say all the work I did with him and now if I could do it again I wouldn't have done all these activities, but it didn't help him to become a reader sooner. He actually wasn't a solid reader until he was eight or nine years old and didn't enjoy reading until at least 10 when we found some really great, actually, graphic novels that really pushed him into enjoying reading. Every child is different. My daughters loved playing with markers and paints and stickers, and I tried to keep that very open-ended and organic and having, an art table available to them. But my son he didn't wanna be any part of that. He wanted to play the games and work with those open-ended tools or create his own little worlds. So I mentioned Charlotte Mason, and actually the Waldorf philosophy of education is the same. They don't advocate for formal learning until even when a child their first teeth fall out and their front teeth are beginning to grow, and that can be even up to age seven. So Rudolph Steiner said, and I find this really interesting, he said, play is the work of childhood. When children play, they're experiencing the world with their entire being. Now I certainly agree with the second part of that, but Waldorf philosophy is actually that free imaginative play in early childhood and children. Then they're learning skills that can be used later for academic learning, and they're not doing any worksheets or drill and practice exercises because their brains aren't ready. Certainly their hands, their dexterity isn't ready for writing yet. And the Waldorf philosophy, it incorporates music,, and recitation and acting, and finger knitting and drawing in the visual arts all during play during that beginning age of social development. So it's very wonderful. But going back to Steiner's quote, where he says, play is the work of a child. It's interesting because this quote is also used in advocacy of a Montessori learning environment where a child is set up with different activities that you're doing and it actually is work. But in the Waldorf philosophy, children aren't working. It is actually play. John Locke said "Children should not have anything like work or serious laid on them. Neither their minds nor their bodies will bear it. It injures their healths and they're being forced and tied down to their books in any age. At enmity with all such restraint has, I doubt not been the reason why a great many have hated books and learned all their lives after tis like a surf that leaves an inversion behind not to be removed." So author Mark Armitage explains this, and I think in a brilliant way, "I can see the reasoning behind saying, play is the child's equivalent to work, but it isn't. And saying it doesn't help, it's a distraction. It is belittling play and giving into the adult world idea that play is only worth something because it has a product or an end result." And this is the basis of a Reggio Amelia approach to play and learning in early childhood. The play in art, it does not have to have an end product for it to have inherent value. The process is what has value and the learning that is cultivated in the mind, though it is not measured, it is priceless. Charlotte Mason said five of the 13 waking hours should be at the disposal of children. Three, at least of these from two o'clock till five, for example, should be spent out of doors in all but very bad weather. Brisk work and ample leisure and freedom should be the rule of the homeschool. The work not done in its own time must be left undone. Children should not be embarrassed and they should have a due sense of the importance of time and that there is no other time for the work not done in its own time. She emphasized the importance of being outdoors in nature and play an unprompted play for children. Her comparison here is that play is not work and work should not have the place of play, even if the work has not been done. And she is not only speaking of the younger years, she is speaking of elementary and beyond should be filled with masterly, inactivity, and in nature. This is a time where a child is not directed and they can choose their afternoon activities and even embrace that boredom that all too often children in today's culture just don't have. Charlotte Mason prescribes that children should not be formally taught to read or write until that's six years of age, and there's a value in play and the learning that comes through the brain development. Those motor skills, gross and fine. The growth of the imagination, the growth of creativity, all from the hands off from the adult and the hands on play for the child. I just wanted to mention briefly a little bit more about Montessori. Maria Montessori deviated from this approach. Her method of teaching focused heavily on creating an environment for specific tasks of learning. And I've incorporated some of these things. I love the Montessori practical life activities where a child is learning about sweeping and wiping and beating and zipping, and those are teaching practical life skills. But some of these other philosophies like Regio or Waldorf, I think even Charlotte Mason would say, that those activities are best done in the home in a natural setting as they come up rather than on a tray where you practice. I'm not too picky in saying, these are wrong. I certainly created many invitations to practical life to for my children, but I just wanted to mention the deviation there and how it is a bit different. So what can we do as homeschool moms? What is our takeaway here? Just encourage playtime. Encourage small parts, play. I'd encourage you if your playroom is just an absolute mess to, to glean it out and do this when the kids aren't around. Or you could make it an exciting thing and say, we're going to donate to children in need. That can be a time to really work with your child's heart. For them to be willing to donate things, but time and play, time and nature, less directed by you with less toys can be so worth it. And if you do have too many toys and I have been there with all the gifts and all the things, it's a really great idea to box up and have things on rotation too, so that a child when you maybe need to get things done in the afternoon, can be entertained by a box of toys that they only see, every couple days or once a week, if you have one, you have four total boxes and you use one every week of the month, that's a great way to do it. So please don't stress Don't stress about. Maybe if you have too many plastic toys or too many one, one size fits all toys, that is fine. My son loved that little baby Einstein little radio thing where he pressed the buttons. Babies love sound toys. I am not saying that we have to get rid of all of those. But I think that we can have a very good balance of things and as we're bringing more into the home or eliminating, we can think about what is encouraging their sense of wonder or encouraging their sense of, "I wanna create a project about this mom, let's go to the library." Let's go see what we can read about something and building something together. In today's public educational system, we push academics far too soon in the preschool programs, in those headstart programs. Now there is some emphasis on play, which is great, but if you look at even some of the European schools, it's a quite different approach. We've talked about Italy too, but in Norway, the children are only their only task is to play. You can see that in their later years how that has benefited them fully. I'm gonna link a great article about those Norwegian schools. I saw as a kindergarten teacher and that I had to push curriculum constantly. I wanted the children to play and have more playtime, but I wasn't even really allowed because the principal and I was directed to only teach curriculum, and that becomes so exhausting. But what's interesting is that in those elementary years, there's now a de-emphasis on academics and things like through ideas like creative thinking skills or collaborating with others or writer's workshop can come at the children when there's actually no foundation behind those things. In terms of writer's workshop, if a child hasn't been given the literature that has the foundation for beauty and grammar and spelling, then what are they gonna even be writing about? The classical education approach, this is where that comes in, and it's truly so important for our children to have a strong liberal arts education. So they can prepare them for creating and writing and arguing, and that rhetoric and that logic when they're older. Young children also love to memorize poetry, listen to those classic fairy tales, look at beautiful art, listen to beautiful classical music. All those things can be done without that heavy push for academics. So today, friends, I just want to encourage you to take a breath and not feel pressured to push academics too soon. Our children need playtime and my prayer is just that you can cultivate that importance of play in your own home. Emphasize the importance of nature time, and being outdoors, whether that's in your own backyard or at a local park. And emphasize the importance of reading to our children. If our children play, spend time in nature and are read to, they are more than prepared when they are six years old and ready for academics to have just a really positive ready approach to academics in their later years. So I'm gonna leave you with some beautiful Bible verses here from the book of Zechariah, and this is from chapter eight. Here, God is speaking about the restoration of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile, and then when the Persians were taking over with Darius. But here it is, beginning with verse one. Then the word of the Lord of hosts came saying, "Thus says the Lord of hosts. I am exceedingly jealous for Zion. Yes, with great wrath. I am jealous for her, thus says the Lord. I will return to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the city of truth, and the mountain of the Lord of hosts will be called the Holy Mountain. Thus says the Lord of hosts, old men and old women will again sit in the streets of Jerusalem. Each man with his staff and his hand because of age and the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls playing in its streets, thus says the Lord of hosts. If it is too difficult in the sight of the remnant of this people in those days, will it also be difficult in my sight? Declares the Lord of hosts, thus says the Lord of hosts. Behold, I am going to save my people from the land of the east. I'm from the land of the West and I will bring them back and they will live in the midst of Jerusalem and they shall be my people and I will be their God in truth and righteousness." So God here is talking about the rebuilding of the temple when all is set right? And where are the children? They are playing in the streets. Our God designed our children to play. They deserve play. So give them that gift today, friends. And hopefully you feel no pressure from that and that's been encouraging to you. Thank you so much for joining us and I just wish God's blessing on you today.