Week 4 PPC Agenda

Relating to Play as it Happens in the Body is a week where we'll think about how we use our bodies to play, how we play in our bodies and how play feels to our bodies.

Relating to Play as it Happens in the Body:

Case Study with Kelsey Langley of KOOP Adventure Play:

Using my love language of story sharing, I'll open each week's content with a short story of play from my playwork experience that highlights the work we're about to dive into and sets the tone for where we're headed during the week.

Jill Wood, Adventure Play at the Parish School & Bayou City Play:

According to current cultural norms, approximately 17% of the human population is neurodiverse. Invisible disabilities affect the way children move, hear, feel, and perceive, but our intervention style as adults can have a large impact on whether those differences are barriers to play, or powerful strengths within our settings. Jill will discuss ways we can better support children with neurological differences based on twelve years of experience running an adventure playground at a school for neurodiverse children.

Angela Hanscom, Timbernook founder, Auther of Balanced & Barefoot.

As we continue to decrease children’s time and space to move and play outdoors, we are seeing a simultaneous rise in the number of children that are presenting with sensory and motor deficits. At the same time, classroom teachers are observing more and more children having trouble with attention, falling out of their seats in school, increased clumsiness, and even aggressiveness with games like tag on the playground. So, how can we reverse this alarming trend of sensory and motor issues in children? How can we ensure that children are fully engaging their body, mind, and all of their senses?Using the same philosophy that lies at the heart of her popular TimberNook program—that nature is the ultimate sensory experience, and that psychological and physical health improves for children when they spend time outside on a regular basis—Angela Hanscom offers several strategies to help children thrive in outdoor environments using a therapeutic approach to nature play.

Susan Bane, Pediatric School Occupational Therapist & KOOP Board Member:

This presentation examines how play helps us understand personal physical awareness from the tip of our toes to the top of our head giving that, all is well, “You Are Here” assurance, critical to further physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual development. Input made available to receptors via play-sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch (light touch, deep pressure touch and enteroception) sparks integration of the senses which enhances body and spatial awareness. Purposeful, visually directed movement via play develops midline crossing, laterality and rotation around the core and bilateral coordination. This growth results in centering and grounding across all developmental areas . The quiet, contemplative, mindfulness allowed with unstructured play facilitates sensory and movement integration. Play contributes to our sense of who we are, where we are and our place in this world. Play builds the foundational sense of self, nurtures both bottom-up and top-down processing, broadens and expands an individual's window of tolerance, leading to improved self regulation and resilience. Foundational awareness of the physical body through play, however, is critical to this exponential growth- “I am here”.