Big and Scary

“…And were the children scAred?”

As grown-ups adjust and tackle their own trauma surrounding COVID-19, it’s time for us to take a step back and make sure our littles have space and time to process. Kids are lucky, in that they have this amazing built-in ability to process the world through PLAY. But what does play look like during quarantine? How are our youngest citizens coping with this sudden change? How do I talk to kids about the world right now without scaring them and without equally playing it off as no big deal?

It’s definitely weird to explain why we can’t go to the park or the library like we used to. Even weirder that we can’t hang with our neighbors or walk to the trail at the end of the street. Honestly, having no one around as the natural consequence is REALLY CONFUSING for young children. It’s not just the sick people who are home, its the people who don’t want to get sick or already got sick and didn’t get that sick or didn’t even get sick at all.

Reports of kids incorporating ‘coronavirus’ into their play are coming in, article here and podcast episode here, and are only the tip of the iceberg. Kids are processing this with the tools they have available, meaning it might not play out as ‘corona cooties’ but may be ‘alligators’ or ‘the big bad wolf.’ Fear is at the root of a lot of this play, and making sure you meet your child’s fears with confidence and respect is really important. It’s equally important to model being scared, conquering fear, and understanding that you can hold the somewhat conflicting ideas of fear and hope at the same time.

“…You bet theY were!”

One of my favorite books about being scared is called “Snip Snap! What’s That!” by Mara Bergman, illustrated by Nick Maland. This somewhat simple, and seemingly innocuous, story is PERFECT for tackling the complex emotion of fear. It is definitely a ‘repeat read’ in the preschool classroom… it’s the kind of book that as soon as we finish it the kids want to start it again IMMEDIATELY. So without further adieu, here’s Tiffany and her son sharing this gem with you:

“AlligAtor, You get out!”

I think the appeal of this book to children mainly stems from the validation of feeling scared AND also conquering that fear. It’s a confidence-booster of a story! I mean, who HASN’T wanted to cry and cry and cry and hide sometimes just like Johnathan?!

Before coronavirus hit the scene, I thought we’d moved on past this book. Books come and go in classrooms based on what kids are interested in and what they want to play (and what they’re learning from that particular book at that particular moment). When my family found ourselves at home for this extended period, the “why” questions started popping up at an equal rate to the alligator play. It was all we did for the first week… I was the alligator, I was the alligator catcher, the alligator was imaginary and we all caught it with nets together, the alligator was in the cave and we can’t go in the cave because alligators (naturally). Then I remembered this book and it all made sense!

We were playing and playing and playing at feeling afraid and taking back that fear.

I ordered another copy just for us as soon as that realization hit me. We’ve read it at least 10 times a day every day since it arrived, and I think there’s a little less fear in our lives because of it. We’ve practiced telling that alligator to get out - we are ready to take on whatever the world throws at us next.

Enjoy your day, and more importantly, enjoy your kids,

-TiffAnY

The Homestead: Playful Playdough

PlAYdough! PlAYdough! PlAYdough!

Playdough is one of our FAVORITE things to do, both at school and at home! We have a fail-safe, no-cook recipe that is just magic. Here’s the thing. Playdough recipes are basically all the same. Just like pie crust, its getting a feel for it and doing it over and over that realllllly dials in your playdough making skills. I’ve also written this recipe in a SUPER kid-friendly way, with the goal being that your child can help you with the making of it too!

Step 1: Assemble your tools

You will need:

• 1/2 cup measuring scoop. Specifically a 1/2 cup scoop, because if you want to minimize dishes and maximize helping, this is how you do that with only ONE dirty scoop and it adds EVEN MORE MATH to this conversation already. I’m calling this ‘one scoop.’

• 1 Tablespoon scoop. Again, specifically this size. I’m calling this ‘one spoonful.’

• 1 large bowl

• 1 large non-wooden spoon (or else all of the dough just sticks to the spoon like glue… like seized cheese even worse…)

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Step 2: Assemble your ingredients

Don’t let me confuse you here with this list of ingredients. Just make sure you have enough of each one but DON’T MEASURE IT YET. Do that part in step 3. For now, just make sure you have at least:

• 2.5 cups flour

• 1/2 cup salt

• 2T cream of tartar

• 2T cooking oil

• 1.5 cups boiling hot liquid (water or tea!)

• Any desired dry spices

• Any desired liquid oils/scents/colors

• 1 cute lil kid

Step 3: Make it with your child

1. In a large bowl, scoop out 4 scoops flour and 1 scoop salt, 2 spoonfuls cream of tartar, and 2 spoonfuls vegetable oil. Add any dry spices now, and stir until its all evenly mixed.

2. In a separate, heat-proof container, heat up 1.5 cups of water to boiling. Once it’s done, add any colors and liquid scents to the liquid here. In order for the playdough to actually work, the water needs to be hot enough and plentiful enough to fully dissolve the salt. Add in 3 scoops of this to the dry ingredients (1.5 cups)

3. HERE’S THE SECRET STEP! Add the full 1.5 cups of liquid, and it will still be super-duper sticky and wild. (This is pure delight for a young child, don’t stress about the mess!) Stir and knead it with your very sticky hands until it cools a little, then slowly SLOWLY add one or two handfuls at a time of flour into the mix. The key here is to get the salt all melted and evenly distributed and re-cooled and THEN get it the right texture. It will harden up a lot as it cools, don’t make it over-dry or crumbly by rushing this step.

Pro Tip: Don’t use anything with a sugar base for this, or it will get sticky and you’re in ant/mold city, baby!

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Step 4: playplayplay

Some pro-tips: Give your kid all of it at once! We are so used to the teeensy tiny amounts given in those delightful yellow tube-cans of ‘Pladoh’ that the idea of a whole mountain of it seems strange at first. BUT IT’S NOT IT’S JUST GLORIOUS. We put out a big plastic cutting board underneath it at home (mainly because The Kid loves using knives with his playdough most of all). Always mush it into one giant ball, then roll out into a log for storage (gotta reduce the surface area to reduce drying time), then roll all the air out of the bag and seal. To keep it extra super fresh put it in the fridge in between uses.

Playdough is pretty fun just as is, but we like to add a few kitchen tools to the mix too. I have fond memories of rifling through my grandmothers “mystery kitchen tools’ drawer, finding tools that haven’t seen the light of day since their purchase in 1972 and figuring out how they work while simultaneously cramming them full of playdough. Hard-boiled egg slicers, cherry pitters, jello molds…

…Maybe that’s why I love to cook so much today.

Want to download both the Playful Playdough Recipe and Play Starts ideas?

Final Thoughts: Playdough Rules

I could just leave you with some fun play ideas to ‘occupy your children’ while you attempt to work from home during this quarantine, but I promise that is NOT the goal here. Playdough is fully LOADED with learning - there’s a reason it’s a staple in preschool classrooms across the world! Here’s a quick developmental breakdown, using the “Developmentally Appropriate Practice” framework for you nerds like me:

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This list is just the tip of the iceberg…. so are you a playdough convert yet?! IT REALLY IS THE BEST. Slap together a batch for your kids asap, and watch the magic unfold.

Enjoy your day, and more importantly, enjoy your kids!

-TiffAnY

PS - Need more inspiration? Want to share your ideas and pics of your fam enjoying the recipe? Follow us on Instagram @playfrontier, and tag your photos #playfrontierplaydough to get featured on the site!

The Origin of a School

Do plAces hAve birthdAYs?

Well, we’ve made it. Our doors have been open for a whole month and each day brings new joys, new excitement, and new adventures. Celebrating our first month with kids got me thinking… do places have birthdays? When was Play Frontier born?

Was it born the first official licensed day open, April 2? Or how about our first day with employees, March 26? Or maybe the first board meeting? The first day with keys to the building? First day as a nonprofit, adopted by our sponsors, CEKC? The first day with a business license? First business cards? First day with a logo (shout-out to Eliza Carver for her incredible work!)?

Does it go back even further than that? Back to the day I resigned from my delightful and steady job to dive off the deep end? Back further to the first secret “Frontier” Pinterest board, full of images and dreams of what could be? Or maybe back even further, to spring 2016 when the name Frontier hit me like a ton of bricks and started coloring my world-view with ideas for “someday, at my own school…”

What about even further than that? Back to when the building we inhabit was built, or back to when the fields were cleared and ground was broken for the Wind River Nursery. Maybe that’s taking it a bit too far… but it’s important to me, because we love this place, this tree-processing-plant-turned-marijuana-grow-facility-turned-playschool, and we are thankful for all of it. We are thankful for the journey itself.

The reality is that celebrating place is not nearly as important as celebrating people. Celebrating the people who led us to this place, the people who encouraged us to keep going when the path was unclear. Celebrating the people who have volunteered countless hours and hard-earned money to help see this dream realized. Celebrating the people who took a chance on us when Frontier was new and unpredictable, for they all make us who we are today.

We would like to celebrate the people we proudly call our community partners - our Founders, and our Founding Families of Play Frontier - in the way we know best… by making something that will live forever in our hearts and hands.

With thAt, I would like to introduce our Origin Quilt.

Crafted by Tasha Johnson of Explorations Early Learning, this quilt was made as a means of honoring all of the Founders and Founding Families. The idea is that each person, family, and organization that helped us during our first year gets their name written on the quilt. It will hang in our hallway for all to see, and will get taken down at the end of the year to be used by the kids at nap time and during play. Each new child who spends time at Play Frontier will get to snuggle in it and let it keep them warm, build a fort with it, see the letters and names and ask questions about it. Our Origin Quilt will keep the memory of all of the love and work that went into our beginnings.

Know a person or organization that might be interested in adding their name to the quilt? Send a sponsorship form their way, or have them donate through the button at the bottom of this website! (All donations are tax-deductible… wahoo!)

“Why donate? Don’t your families pay tuition?”

This question has come up a few times, and the answer is that our goal at Play Frontier, a nonprofit organization, is to keep the cost of childcare affordable to our community by raising additional money to cover our operating costs. Tuition covers our day-to-day costs, but we need additional funds to make facility improvements - like building playground structures, to purchase larger items, and have on hand for emergencies (whoa that was a lot of snow to move). Your donation makes Play Frontier an even better, stronger, and happier place.