Nutritious play
Hello Co-Conspirators!
Welcome to the first edition of The Topic Book, your weekly roundup newsletter of all that’s new for paid subscribers.
Rather than bombard you with emails each time I publish a newsletter, you can use this as a jumping-off point for your explorations.
Each newsletter has its own section but, first, here’s something more general, on the importance of giving your child a varied ‘play diet’, with due acknowledgment to Katy Bowman for riffing on her idea of ‘nutritious movement’. And with apologies to you for having to endure a picture of me in muddy shorts.
Nutritious play: Does your child get her five-a-day?
Start with the Child
A play companion for toddlers
How do we capture our children’s attention once they can crawl or walk away from the carefully-arranged treasure baskets we have created for them? It has to be something deeply meaningful, that meets the child where she is on her developmental journey. With bonus points if there’s minimal set-up, nothing to buy and a focus on independence.
It has to be heuristic play.
Heuristic play: How toddlers learn through discovery
Spring to School
A play companion for preschoolers
As we reach the end of the preschool year, it’s time to look ahead to ‘upper nursery’ for those children turning four and to starting school for those turning five.
We naturally worry about the transition, especially if our child isn’t writing as confidently as we imagined. But, with the right fine motor skills in place, it all comes together in the end.
Screen-Free Saturdays
A play companion for the over 5s
Everybody knows that playing games is practice for life. And, if that’s the case, my uncle had better go back to the drawing board because he took a wrong turn somewhere and now he’s well and truly lost.
Read this cautionary tale and save your child from a similar fate.
Say no to phones
I’m sure you don’t need convincing, but in case you’re still on the fence, watch Jonathan Haidt’s TED talk on the perils of smartphones for children.
This is a trap I was certain I wouldn’t fall into. My eldest started secondary school this year and was travelling home alone.
Dad, I need a phone so that I can call you when I’m on my way home.
I didn’t have a phone. You’ll be just fine without one.
He pestered, he pleaded.
Everyone else in my class has one.
OK, you can have a dumb phone just for making calls.
Everyone will laugh at me.
My wife felt sorry for him. I was outvoted.
AND IT HAS BEEN THE WORST YEAR OF MY LIFE.
It was under lock and key both at school and at home but it didn’t stop him thinking about it all the time.
It has taken a full 12 months to get rid of it.
Don’t make the same mistake.
Trust me.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/KNEGWrD08f8?feature=oembed
Patterns in Play
All you need to know about schema play
This is becoming a standalone, everything-you-need-to-know-about-schemas resource. You’ll still get the ‘newsletters’ but up front, as a block. I plan to add videos and other resources once the article backlog is published.
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The Wonder Year
A play companion for babies - COMING SOON
Babies are cute - but they’re not that interesting. At least that’s what I thought before I took my masters. I didn’t have children of my own at the time so my experience of them was limited - but how wrong I was!
In my first few years of teaching, I struggled. After an initial shock, behaviour management wasn’t a problem - male teachers get an easier ride - but I always felt I was missing a piece of the developmental jigsaw. I’d switched to teaching after taking law as an undergrad and the year-long post-grad was light on theory. I knew what to do but I had no idea why.
I still squirm to think back to those first parents’ evenings after I’d qualified. I was like a politician trying to filibuster, running down the clock before they could ask me any difficult questions.
That all changed once I studied babies.
Babies taught me to see.
School-age children are just too complicated. There’s so much going on, so much is interconnected. Their actions have become integrated.
But babies are simpler. their actions more straightforward. They spend their first year trying to escape the embrace of their primitive reflexes and bring their bodies under voluntary control. And as they control their limbs and start to interact with the world around them, so too do they
The Wonder Year will be an occasional series. I’ll publish posts whenever they support an idea we’re exploring in Start with the Child, our toddler newsletter. But, over time, I hope to start writing weekly.
As a Co-Conspirator, you’ll have it free, forever.
Even if your child is beyond her first year, the series will give you a window into her developing mind.
Look out for the first issue in next week’s Topic Book.
I hope you enjoy it.
The images
I’m trying something new with Play with Purpose.
It’s hard to beat a picture of a real child engaged in real play - but for Play with Purpose I find myself needing pictures that tell a very specific story: the look of disgust when a sibling cheats at cards; the glum expressions of children looking out at a wet afternoon.
So I’m having a go at AI image generation. I’ve tested a variety of styles, as you can see below.
Which do you prefer? Classic picture book illustrations or AI ‘photographs’? The technology is improving all the time and I’ve got plans to animate the characters eventually but, for now, I’m simply hoping to settle on a style.
Please reply to this email and let me know.
Follow me on X and Instagram
Lastly, you can now find me on social media: X for conversation and Instagram for play tips. Hope to see you there.
See you next week for more stories from Elmwood.
Happy playing!
Alexis
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