Category: #TeacherMom

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So What Do We Say If We Can’t Say Be Careful?

When supervising risky play, it’s important to avoid saying “be careful.” I know, I know. This is hard to do, it’s a phrase deeply ingrained in our brains. I’m still working on it myself! Looking through the child’s lens, hearing “be careful” is such an empty saying. Be careful with what? How? Where? When?

The question I ask myself when I’m tempted to turn to the same phrase is instead, “Do they need advice or do they need awareness?”

Awareness: When I can see a bigger picture they maybe can’t or haven’t realized yet. 

Example: 3 year old climbing an apple tree, but doesn’t know that one of the branches is dead and not as sturdy as the rest of the tree branches. 

Situation 1: I call over- “Be careful!” The child grabs the branch, the branch breaks, the child falls out of the tree. I’m frustrated because I told him to be careful, he’s frustrated because he’s still not sure why he fell out of the tree. 

Situation 2: I move slightly closer and point out things he can make himself aware of. “Look at the branch you are sitting on, it’s so full of leaves and so strong! Is that next branch up also full of leaves? How does it feel when you grab it?” Child reluctantly grabs the branch, realizes it’s dead and not sturdy, then finds a new path to climb. 

Advice: The child is attempting a task for the first time and needs advice on how to find success. 

Example: A child walking along a fallen log to cross a slow, shallow river for the first time. 

Situation 1: I call over, “Be careful!” Child gets the footing wrong, falls into the water, and everyone is upset. 

Situation 2: I step closer and offer advice and coaching on how to help my child across the log so they can still perform independently and have this learning opportunity, but by adding in the coaching I just took the task from dangerous to risky. 

It’s a tricky mind shift and it takes a lot of practice, I know this from experience! However, choosing your words carefully when engaging children in risky play will turn out to become a huge benefit in the long run. 

Here are some other phrases that can help you make this conversation shift: 

Awareness: 

“Do you notice how….”
“How is your body feeling?”
“Is this stable or wobbly?
“If you look up, do you see what I’m seeing?”
“What’s your plan?” 
“How do you want to accomplish this?”

Advice:

“When I do this activity I like to…”
“You might want to try…”
“When using this tool, a good safety feature we need to know is…”
“The rules for using xyz include…” 

Now please do not get me wrong, if your child is in immediate danger, please take all necessary steps to keep them safe. But risky play is needed developmentally and is so good for the child in the long run. It’s forever a balance between risky and dangerous play! However, I can promise you that calling out, “Be careful!” will not make the activity any less dangerous. 

What phrases do you use with your child instead of “Be careful?” 

Cover photo by Mallory Wilcox

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When Does Risky Play Become Dangerous Play? How to Find the Balance

I posted earlier this week about the importance of risky play for children, but now I want to expand on one specific aspect of risky play that I feel is one of the biggest struggles caregivers have regarding risky play. 

When does risky play become dangerous play? 

I wish I could give you a straightforward answer, I really do. Because I would love a straightforward answer myself! But there is a lot to this question that we have to analyze ourselves to answer it. 

The first question is- what is the experience level of the child performing the task? Age is irrelevant here. Child A can be an expert at climbing a ladder at 18 months and child B can still be learning the concept at 3 years old. 

Next, you need to analyze the situation. If they fall or fail at what they are doing, what’s below them? Cement or grass? Hardwood floors or carpet? Is there a corner of a table nearby that you need to be aware of? 

My son loves jumping from our couch onto a crash pad on the floor, which is typically an okay activity for him. However, one particular day I noticed a wooden kitchen table chair positioned perfectly next to the crash pad that if he jumped just right, it could harm him. It was a simple conversation, “Hey buddy, do you see this chair next to your crash pad? That might be a problem if you accidentally jump into it! Let’s put it back into the kitchen so we don’t have to worry about it being a problem!” Dangerous play went right back to risky play. 

How much and how close supervision does the child need for the specific activity? And how much supervision can you realistically give them at the moment? 

My 6-year-old loves climbing our ladder to pick apricots off our tree from the tallest branches. However, she is still fairly new at ladders and it’s well above 6 feet off the ground. This task requires closer supervision and most likely some coaching to get her through it, and if I can’t give her that for some reason, then this risky play just turned into dangerous play and should be avoided. With enough time and practice, she will be more confident and able to climb a ladder by herself, making less supervision not dangerous anymore. 

Safe, risky, and dangerous play is always ebbing and flowing. It can change day to day and even hour to hour as children work hard at their play, fail and falter a few times, analyze how they can do better, and try again. And as time goes on, you also become more experienced and better at determining what is risky and what is dangerous for your child.

Really, risky play is just one big science experiment for them to do over and over, analyze, and then learn from. I think if you can allow yourself to step back and foster their risky play, you might be amazed at how much they really can accomplish on their own. 

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Secrets of the Apple Tree

girl climbing apple tree picks fruit

I’ve been on this Earth for many years now,
Long enough to witness the different stages of life, multiple times.

The one I’m perpetually drawn to is childhood. 
The innocence of a child is unlike any other
Because they pick and climb and run and scream
All without a single worry about what tomorrow brings.

Always running.
Always climbing.
Always wondering.
Always growing. 

It doesn’t matter the time, the decade, or the season,
I’ve discovered one constant truth-
That children need movement and play and risk. 
They are drawn to me for that exact reason.

The constant I am in their lives, 
And have been in the past for others,
And will continue to be in the future 
To those that wander in. 

For I am the apple tree
That has nourished bellies
And held strong for endless climbing. 
My leaves provide them with shade 
And my branches hold them sublimely. 

As the years go on, 
As children grow,
I know they will lose interest with time.
But I worry not. 

The next generation will come
And pick and climb and run and scream.
All without a single worry about what tomorrow brings.
For there is a gravitational pull that an apple tree yields.

Risk and reward.  
Peace and tranquility. 
Havoc and uncertainty. 

We truly were created for one another,
The child and the apple tree. 

Photo by Zen Chung

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Risk vs. Reward: Risky Play for Children

Risky play is such a buzzword in the parenting/ academic world right now. It’s the idea that kids play in a way that has an added level of risk- they climb trees and ride bikes down big hills and give their bodies the opportunity to fail or falter, in order to learn how to change their course of action to find success eventually. 

Think of walking on a balance beam that’s positioned a few inches off of the floor. A 2-year-old may be fairly proficient at walking and running, but asking them to walk on a balance beam for the first time is a harder task for them, they have to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other in order to move forward. 

It’s inevitable that they will walk wobbly or maybe even fall off entirely. This is adding a layer of risk into play. 

Safe to them would be walking slowly on a flat, even surface. 

Risky would be attempting a balance beam a few inches off the floor. 

Dangerous would be attempting the same balance beam independently, but a few feet off of the floor instead of a few inches. 

Again, this is all for a two-year-old with no prior practice on a balance beam. The level of safe, risky, and dangerous play for any given child at any given age is constantly changing and evolving based on their experience level. 

What is the why behind risky play? Because it is one of the best things you can do for a child’s development. The list of skills that are developed during risky play is as follows, but is not limited to: 

Problem-solving skills
Self-confidence
Self-assurance
Independence
Cause and effect
Self-regulation
Executive functioning skills
Brainstorming capabilities
Language development
Vocabulary
Risk assessment
Communication
Life skills

Yes, you can get all of this and more by allowing your child to engage in risky play! It’s a no-brainer. 

But I know there are concerns surrounding risky play because I have those same concerns. When does risky play become dangerous play? How do you allow risky play while also avoiding trips to the emergency room with broken bones? It’s a delicate balance and with most things in life, becomes easier with time and practice. 

Your role as the caregiver or responsible adult over any number of kids is to determine where the line between risky and dangerous is… not for yourself. But for the child. 

Things to consider when supervising risky play:

-The overall situation. Are there any sharp objects, heavy furniture, or other dangerous factors that need to be avoided, pointed out, or considered? 

-The age, ability, and skill level of the child or children playing. 

-How much supervision you can allot to the risky play? Some risky play needs more supervision than others, and if your attention is divided too much at the moment for the child to engage in a certain activity that needs closer supervision, it’s okay to say no. 

Time and experience are on your side with all of these. Utilize it. It gets easier over time to analyze risky vs dangerous play. There is so much more to be said about risky vs dangerous play and even the language we should be using when supervising risky play. But those will be saved for another day! 

Until then, let the kids climb the apple trees and ride their bikes around the block. Take a breath (and probably a step back) the next time you see them scaling the rock climbing wall on the playground or turning the curb into a balance beam. Learning is happening. 

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Are Extra Curriculars Helping or Harming?

School is out and you rush there to pick up your kids directly from school because if the bus brings them home today, you won’t have enough time to get a good snack in them and shuttle them off to practice. 

Once football drop off is done, you drive across town to gymnastics drop off. By the time you’ve accomplished that, you’re back on the road for skating lessons pick up, it’s your day for carpooling. 

Tomorrow, the story is similar, but swap it all out with viola lessons, ski club, and karate. 

Extracurriculars can be very beneficial for our kids, but at what point is it causing everyone more harm than good? 

Mary wrote about this a few years back, originally sharing one of my all-time favorite videos in her post. Her wise words have stuck with me. She wrote, 

“Here’s my highly scientific equation for why:
Stress of making activity happen > benefit of activity = CANCEL regret-free!
There’s already enough hustle in our lives just to keep things running smoothly.”

Mary Wade

We’ve kept up with this same mindset in our household when it comes to extracurriculars. It can be easy to forget from time to time and sign ourselves up for too much. But right now we are in a sweet spot with activities outside our home where they aren’t a long-term commitment. For the most part, everything is on a month-to-month basis, so choosing to stop if it no longer suits our family’s needs is easily done. Once we enter the stages of paying a lot of money out of pocket for them, the considerations made in order to sign up will be much more serious. I love Mary’s outline for qualifications she looks for in extracurriculars: 

  • kids must be able to walk or bike there (which means I don’t have to play my least favorite role of taxi, we get exercise, and we help our air quality. Win-win-win.)
  • cannot compete with meal times (I’ve found that it’s way too slippery a slope for me to be like, yeah, fast food is fine just for now…)
  • must have a compelling reason to take kids away from free play time (which is at least as valuable as the vast majority of extracurricular activities). 

Being able to walk or bike there can be very situational for each family, but it worked beautifully for hers. 

Competing with meal times is a big one for us, too. We also fall down the slippery slope of yeah, fast food is fine just for now… 

Free play is crucial. It’s essential. It’s the highest form of learning they can have. So extracurricular activities really do need a strong, compelling reason to take our children away from this time.

Yes, extracurriculars will teach your kids discipline and new sports or hobby skills. It can also help them manage their time and it can be a great social connection, too. But the ultimate question you need to be asking yourself when signing your children up for the next thing to keep their week full and busy is, “is this activity helping or hurting the overall well-being of our entire family?” 

In the meantime, check out this video by GoGo squeeZ on the importance of independent, free play. It’s truly eye-opening. 

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The Different Ways We Learn

Sight words are such a buzzword in our household right now. And if you’ve had a kindergartener before, you know exactly what I’m talking about. 

Each day my daughter comes home with new worksheets, readers, and other various activities that have to do with sight words. Her teacher also sends her home with a new set of sight words to play with and master from home each week. We’ve had a lot of fun learning these words through the games and activities we’ve come up with together. 

The way I tend to learn best is repetition, repetition, repetition. If I read the words over and over, say it, spell it, rush through them on flashcards again and again, and then I will never forget the words. My mind has to see the word, deconstruct the word, put the word together again, and then it’s set in there forever. 

Because this is how my mind works best, this was the basis for a lot of the activities I chose to do with my daughter. The more exposure, the better! We were doing so much repetition of the words that I was surprised and frustrated when I started realizing that what we were doing wasn’t sticking. When quizzed on the words, she wasn’t able to recall what the words were. 

To be honest, it made me feel like a failure. I have all of this background in teaching and I can’t even figure out how to teach my own child some sight words. 

One night, my husband lovingly stepped in. He took out the sight word flashcards and they started making sentences together using only sight words. They would make a sentence, read it, and then create a new sentence, repeating the process over and over. Eventually, they pulled out the sticky notes and added CVC words like cat and dad. They spent about ten minutes doing this activity and while they were having fun and bonding, I was doubting his ability to get anything to stick beyond their current work. But nevertheless, I let them have their time. 

The next evening we pulled out our sight word Jenga game, and immediately I was shocked. She knew the words! All of them! We had done so many different activities and nothing was working, but suddenly in one day, it all clicked for her. 

I approached my husband about it afterward and he told me he was playing a word game with her in a way that he would learn the new words best. By application. By seeing them as a part of a sentence and reading them together with other words. 

In my mind, this made no sense. How can she even read the words if she hasn’t spent the time memorizing them beforehand? 

But in both of their minds, the path using real-life applications worked. I was trying to lead her down my own road of rote memorization for learning, while she desperately needed real-life application.

The concept that everyone learns in different ways is something I know and was taught how to work with during my undergrad. But when it came to my own child, I just assumed her mind worked the same way mine did. I was giving her varying activities to do, but the process for all of them was the same. Repeat the words over and over and over until eventually, you memorize them. 

After my revelation, I started catering to her learning style better. 

We continually made up sentences with sight words. We read books filled with sight words. We even wrote our own book using sight words! Anytime we were looking at words and sentences on cereal boxes, in grocery stores, etc., we pointed out the sight words and read them together. 

More application. Less rote memorization. 

It was a great, simple reminder that all minds have different systems and routes for learning. Yes, even our own offspring sometimes. 

And if we can take some time to figure out each individual mind and the route they personally need to take when they are struggling to grasp a concept, it can make all the difference in the world to them. It may even turn them into a little, tiny reader. 

Photo by James Wheeler

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Can A Worksheet Do That? Teaching Social Studies in a Hands-On Way

We recently made the decision to pull my daughter from school and do “distance learning” for a short time because we had a new virus or sickness in our home every week and it wasn’t sustainable anymore (more on that story to come later). 

Luckily, the school was able to work with us to make her a “distance learner” because of Covid protocols still in place, instead of unenrolling and re-enrolling her when she’s ready to head back. 

She is in kindergarten, so the workload is fairly easy and somewhat hands-on. However, one worksheet for social studies looked like this: 

Photo: A group of neighbors with adults and children standing around, laughing, and talking. Food is being exchanged. 

Text on photo: Talk About It: Essential Question. Who are your neighbors? 

Text: Talk about how these people are being good neighbors. Draw and write about one way you can be a good neighbor. 

Writing prompt: I can be a good neighbor by 

I am sure this worksheet sparks great conversations in classrooms and it gives the students a chance to draw and write about what they’re talking about. 

The only requirement for my daughter was to do everything this page said. Talk about it, write about it, and draw a picture. Then she would have been done with the assignment and moved on. 

But what did she learn from that interaction? 

Are we really learning social studies with this worksheet, or are we learning conversation skills, writing, and drawing? 

How can we do this… better? 

We started with a picture book.

Good Morning Neighbor by Davide Cali and Maria Dek 

I highly recommend keeping this one in your personal library, it’s a good one with many applications. 

After reading the book, the discussion started.

Who are our neighbors? What nice things have they done for us? What nice things have we done for them? Why is it important to be a good neighbor? 

And then we took it one step further, what can we do for one of our neighbors today?

This led us to making and delivering dinner and cookies for a neighbor that we knew was sick. We also stopped next door to an elderly widow and chatted with her for a while, asking her if she needed anything. On our way out, we quickly shoveled her driveway and cleared her car of snow and ice. 

On our walk home, we noticed that another neighbor near us had some rugs left outside on their doorstep that had blown into the yard from the high winds. We spent a few minutes gathering them up and stacking them on the doorstep since they were not home to take them inside. 

Once we were finally home, we pulled out the worksheet, and my daughter felt like she was ready to write a whole paper on ways she could be a good neighbor. She wanted to give the full story of everything we accomplished in our afternoon of service. Instead, we settled on a simple few-word sentence, and then she was able to tell her teacher the whole story the next time we went into the school to bring back her finished schoolwork. 

Looking at it overall, how much would she have taken away if we would have had the discussion and written the sentence? She would have practice in writing, that’s for sure. But the whole point was to focus on social studies. What did she take away from a social studies standpoint? 

She would probably know that she needs to be a good neighbor. And maybe have some ideas on how she can be that will stick around in her mind for a few weeks, maybe up to a month. Nothing would stick around long-term. 

But after spending an hour serving our own neighbors, the lesson will engrain itself in her mind more than a light discussion and sentence writing ever would. 

Now I know delivering dinner and sitting down to an afternoon chat with everyone’s neighbor isn’t doable in a full classroom. So what can we do in a classroom of 25+ students to give them a similar experience? 

Talk about neighbors within the classroom. Our neighbors in a classroom are our friends sitting by us, but all together, we are a full community. Discuss ways we can be a good neighbor within our own classroom. 

Give them opportunities to draw pictures or notes for their neighbors. Maybe create crafts or pick treats for their neighbors. Let them practice helping their neighbor when zipping up coats to go outside, or picking up trash around their desk during messy play. 

If you’re creating an uplifting, teamwork environment in the small community of your classroom, it will eventually translate itself into their daily life and show in small ways around the school and in their neighborhoods.

Can filling out a worksheet accomplish that? 

Photo by Katerina Holmes