What a beautiful day!

I’m putting together a quick list of the greatest hits of nature & play books for grown-ups. Here’s a secret tip: if your child thinks you’re occupied in some important way, they might be more inclined to play independently. Reading a real book (not a screen!) is a great way to ‘occupy’ yourself so that your children are more interested in other things.

Screens don’t work, mainly because these are seen as super fun ways to play games or watch things, and playing games with you is way more fun than playing independently alone and watching screens is like the greatest of greatest thing to do ever. Eliminate this battle by changing the environment and reading a physical book instead, and model that reading is a fun hobby!

Best Books on Nature, Play, & Young Children

Full book list found here at Amazon for those wanting to see it all in one place. (Play Frontier is an Amazon Associate, so any books you buy directly from these links will help fund our amazing school!)

Richard Louv:
- “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder”
- “Vitamin N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life”
David Sobel:
Rachel A Larimore:
- “Preschool Beyond Walls: Blending Early Learning Childhood Education and Nature-Based Learning”
- “Establishing a Nature-Based Preschool”
Angela J Hanscom: “Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children”
Scott D Samson: “How to Raise a Wild Child: The Art and Science of Falling in Love with Nature”
Linda Akeson McGurk: “There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather: A Scandanavian Mom’s Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids”
Ainsley Arment: “Call of the Wild and Free: Reclaiming Wonder in Your Child’s Education”
Rusty Keeler: “Seasons of Play: Natural Environments of Wonder”
Nancy Striniste: “Nature Play at Home: Creating Outdoor Spaces that Connect Children with the Natural World”
Julie Powers and Sheila Williams Ridge: “Nature-Based Learning for Young Children”
David Orr: “Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World”
Robin Wall Kimmerer: “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants”
Gary Paul Nabhan and Stephen Trimble: “The Geography of Childhood”

Best Articles on Nature, Play, & Young Children

This is a nerd fest, watch out! If you haven’t done an internet deep dive with me before, check out my favorite search engines scholar.google.com and www.jstor.org for science/peer-reviewed articles. Jstor is my jam, and usually you have to pay or have the sweet sweet alumni/school hook-up, but its free until June 30 because of COVID-19, so read all the things while you can!

Brussoni, Mariana, Rebecca Gibbons, Casey Gray, Takuro Ishikawa, Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter, Adam Bienenstock, Guylaine Chabot, et al. “What Is the Relationship between Risky Outdoor Play and Health in Children? A Systematic Review.”
Brussoni, Mariana, Lise L. Olsen, Ian Pike, and David A. Sleet. “Risky Play and Children’s Safety: Balancing Priorities for Optimal Child Development.”
Chawla, Louise, Kelly Keena, Illène Pevec, and Emily Stanley. “Green Schoolyards as Havens from Stress and Resources for Resilience in Childhood and Adolescence.”
Faber Taylor, Andrea, and Frances E. Kuo. “Children With Attention Deficits Concentrate Better After Walk in the Park.”
Faber Taylor, Andrea, and Frances E. (Ming) Kuo. “Could Exposure to Everyday Green Spaces Help Treat ADHD? Evidence from Children’s Play Settings.”
Tremblay, Mark S., Casey Gray, Shawna Babcock, Joel Barnes, Christa Costas Bradstreet, Dawn Carr, Guylaine Chabot, et al. “Position Statement on Active Outdoor Play.”
Wells, Nancy M., and Kristi S. Lekies. “Nature and the Life Course: Pathways from Childhood Nature Experiences to Adult Environmentalism.”

Still want more?! Full list of references in pdf form here for anyone SERIOUS about their book list!

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

-TiffAnY

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…)

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

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.

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)

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!

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: