Our Little Red Wagons
What is the best wagon? For us, it has to be this wagon. The Town & Country Little Red Wagon that can! The wagon’s stability, its familiar painted wood, knobby tires, and long metal handle—with just the right amount of resistance and maneuverability—make it more than a tool. It’s a forever item, not for transporting children but for handing them the reins.
Water (and Mud) Studies
The children are playing, imagining, and living outside and all the while the gaining real-life skills. Realia (thank you Froebel) refers to real-life objects, environments, or experiences used in education to make learning more meaningful and tangible. In early childhood, realia goes beyond pictures or simulations—it means children engage directly with the physical world to construct understanding.
Community Outdoor School
Outdoor schools and nature schools — those perceptions are also shaped by stakeholders, advocates, the media, books, and organizations to be quite specific. Look up nature schools and you will see children following trails, in meadows, under a tree canopy, walking in streams in public or private land. The landscapes are large and wide. You will also learn of the benefits offered by outdoor schools.
This is not us.
Patches of Blue
Each day and every class session, all of us, children and adults, look up at the sky, studying each corner. The children have developed a shared language of SKY.
Grandmother Magic
As many early childhood programs across Maryland moved outdoors and our own program moved fully outdoors, we all soon discovered that there actually is such thing as bad weather. The answer, of course, is planning and figuring out how we begin our day in response to ANY kind of weather. In this case, we have something we call “grandmother magic” in crochet blankets and Teresa, our Seeds class teacher, a good bit of Tia magic.