Welcome to the Play Based Learning Podcast. I'm your host, Kristen Arby Peterson, and maybe your new teacher, Bestie, that is here to hype you up, maybe give you a motivating kick in the pants, and teach you all I know about play and childhood. I am here to help you challenge old and outdated practices and inspire you to create a truly developmentally appropriate early childhood environment that fosters creativity, passion, Curiosity and joy in the children that you care for.
Let's set the stage for a lifelong love of learning. Let's get going. Oh my gosh, everybody. Okay. This is a full circle moment because, um, one of my early childhood besties, Tiffany Piercehall. Hey. And oh my gosh, I really wish that we could recreate our podcast opening. What was it? Uh, I don't even, was it? Welcome to Q and A with T and K, I'm Kristen and she's Tiffany. Yeah, I don't even know. Was that right? Something like that. Yeah. Sounds about right. Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Anyway. Tiffany Pearsall is joining me today. Like. I am so excited. You're here. I'm so excited to be here. For those of you who don't know, um, we had a podcast called Q and A with T and K. It had over a hundred episodes, like 130 or something. Yeah. Yeah. We did it for a long time. How many years ago was that? Oh Lordy. I want to say like 2012, 2013. Oh my God. Like before Skype was a thing. So we had Butterfly Hill. No. No. You were, you've been a couple of years in.
So in 2014 is when Butterfly Hill opened. So it had to be before that, but it was before like Zoom or Skype. So we actually would fly, I would fly to Washington state to record with Tiffany. And we record like 30 episodes in a weekend. Yes. Just like my brain is mush. What's the next question? We got this. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. That was wild. We had to like sync up our phone calls and then like record the phone call as we phone called.
Yes. Yeah. And once you did all that work, it was like, well, we were going to record 70 now that everything's working. And I think there was probably times where we thought we were recording and then we weren't. And then we had to record again. Oh my goodness. But there was some really good stuff there. You can still find it on. Uh, Playvolution, PlayvolutionHQ. com, um, they're all there.
They're not on like a actual, they're not on like iTunes or anything anymore, but you can find lots of episodes on Playvolution HQ. Hmm. Okay. So here's the cool thing. I actually haven't been out to Washington to visit Tiffany in a few years. I tried to like two Junes ago. I'd say only two. Yeah. It's been three. Because I tried to visit, it was when you were pregnant with Judy. Mm hmm. And Judy's two and a half, so yeah. Um, but I tried to see you after she was born.
She was a couple months old, remember? And then she had COVID. We all had COVID. Yeah. There were several of those like, I'm gonna be in town. Oh, but everybody has COVID. Yeah. But that's not as much of a thing anymore. No. And so I'm making plans to go out to see Tiffany at some point because Tiffany started her own school in what year? Uh, Playfriendier opened in 2019. And, you just opened, you just got a new building. Yeah, we just moved across the street from our old building.
Okay. They want it. Do you want me to, like, are you ready for the full story? I'm ready for the full story. That's why you're here, because it's actually amazing and it's mind blowing. The amount of money that you were given by grant writing for opening this new building. Okay, so tell us all the things. For sure. Okay, so uh, it started when Kristen and I first started podcasting. Podcasting. You or Kristen?
Yeah. That the third person, I dunno why, um, I was working at a public school in Oregon and then I moved, um, because we stopped kind of right around when my first kid, guy was born. Yeah. And I was driving an hour and a half to bring him as an infant to care at somebody's house, um, each way. Mm-Hmm. . So I'd have to wake up at four 30 in the morning to pump and then wake him up at five 30 in the morning and then drive an hour and a half. And then drive home.
And it was just like the most exhausting, most terrible year ever. But I loved my job. And then I was like, we got to find somewhere closer. There were no, there were no openings for infants, not even a slot available. Not just like wait lists, but like, oh, there's a slot. There's no infant care. You cannot get child care for anybody under 12 months of age in the whole county.
And so then I was kind of like, well, I could keep doing this drive thing for a job that I pretty much love, but like has some, I have some big feelings about equity and like paying to go to preschool at a public school. Yeah. Or I could just, like, do it. So I said, fuck it, and I did it. Am I allowed to say bad words on this? I want an explicit warning on it. Okay, good. I love it. Tiffany's spicy these days.
Uh, you pulled me out of the woods too long, and I started turning into a crazy lady in the woods. Um, so we moved to rural Washington. I'm in Carson, Washington, in the Columbia River Gorge, and, um, I opened Play Frontier. My son was a year and a half, we were in the toddler room, um, I found this insane, like, ghost town, is how I describe it. Chip in, you've been there. Oh, yeah. Uh, I've stayed there, and I thought there was like a serial killer outside in the woods.
There's no curtains on the windows in the house that I stayed in in the ghost town, and it's really creepy. We actually slept with knives next to our mattresses. We moved all of our mattresses. Really, it's just like all the elk looking in the window at you. Oh my gosh, we moved all of our mattresses all into the living room when we were there for the play conference, the play in nature conference. Anyway, so anyway, we found this site, it's called the Wind River Nursery. It's a tree nursery.
They had three, three hundred acre fields and then this giant campus. So there are nine houses and a bunch of giant outbuildings and like 30, 000 foot refrigerator warehouses. And nobody was using them. Yeah. So that's, uh, the site was where all of the original park rangers in America were trained. Yeah, they would come and live here and train here and then go everywhere else in the state and in the nation. Yeah, um, and then it shut down in like 91 through 99.
They just descaled it until it was nothing. Yeah, and the Forest Service couldn't maintain these empty buildings that weren't being used. So they transferred it to our county, which I've learned is actually a very big deal. Everyone has to sign off. Um, I literally wouldn't have the building I'm in now if president Trump hadn't signed a piece of paper, which is weird that he had anything to do with my. Interesting.
Yeah. Like transferring land from federal to anything else is very hard to do because it has to pass through all three. So anyway, they transferred a lot of the site to our local county government, but then there's like, what are we supposed to do with it? There are all these great ideas about what could happen, but there's not Money to do it. Um, so anyway, then I just like rolled up on these historic beautiful houses and was like, there needs to be babies everywhere.
Uh, so that started me out. Um, we started in the break room of one of the 30, 000 square foot warehouses. Um, the break room itself was 4, 000 square feet. Wait, so that's what Play Frontier, it was a break room when you started? That was the break room. That's how big this facility is. The break room was three classrooms, a kitchen, kitchen, roll my eyes, it's not, it's like a sink and a fridge. Yeah, yeah. And two bathrooms.
Um, and at the time it was like, well, why would you ever want to, like, nobody lives out here. People are going to have to drive far. Who's going to drive that far? But we're In the National Forest, we can walk to the Pacific Crest Trail, we can walk to, um, the Wind River Arboretum, which is the largest arboretum west of the Mississippi that no one knows about. I do. I've been there. No, you do.
I have, like, been there and, like, seen the marks in the giant trees where they had tried to, like, where they cut them down at some points. Yeah. And that would be pretty cool. Those are pre Yakult burn trees. So that's like 1912. Oh my gosh. It's wild. Um, yeah. And just like all of this free federal land to explore. Right. Yeah. And so we go by foot from our all day, um, licensed childcare and we just leave campus with the kids and.
We've got, these are the good places to catch crawdads in the creek, and these are the good places when it's too hot and you need shade, and these are the good places when it's pouring rain, and you need, like, the deepest, densest cedar you can to, like, make you not soaked and miserable. Yeah. So, we have all that from where we are.
Um, and then, The weird part is that the building, like, before it came to us, someone tried to grow marijuana there and, like, got it all outfitted and then was just like, you know what, I wasted all my money getting this place decked out, see you later, bye. So they didn't know what to do with the facility and then they were like, you know what would be great is if we grew marijuana here and, like, made money. So then they were like, you have to leave.
And we'd only been open for a year at this point when that happened. Um, and at that point we were already like, well, we're never leaving the nursery area because these are the best trails ever. And like, you never get this direct, uninhibited access to nature and a licensed facility at once. Um, so that's when we started scouting the other buildings on site. And, uh, we found a weird one. I love weird old buildings.
Um, so we found one and it's literally across the street from our old location. Um, we worked with the County and our local EEC and our local ESD 112, um, education district, and we wrote a grant and we crossed our fingers and we got a big grant to do it. Um, so the Can we tell people how much it was? Yeah, so the Washington Department of Commerce gave us a million dollars to fix this building a million dollars.
It sounds like so much, but as soon as you start counting up how much each heat pump in the dang building costs, like, it, it took a lot of, uh, time and effort. creativity and grandpa guy painting stuff on the weekend. And, you know, like, thank goodness there's a tractor down the road that we like. And thank goodness that Henry's dad owns a skid steer. Like there's. It was a big community effort to get it, get it over the finish line. Um, and we moved in this last week of January.
So like from, from the first moment of scouting to move in was almost three and a half years. Wow. We did it, man. And it's the freaking best. Okay. Tell us about your new facility. Like what is, tell us some of the big features that you love that you planned purposefully because you know, early childhood and, you know, development, appropriate practice and you know, play and you know, like what a perfect environment set up is. So tell us some of their favorite things. Uh, absolutely.
I did a lot of research. Like, yeah, actual architecture and design of. Childcare facilities is high on my list of favorite things to nerd out about. Um, my soapbox is that oftentimes just getting a space at all is the challenge, not is this a good space? So like no shade, but how many programs are shoved in church basements? And left over old special education rooms because like, Oh, we've got the space. We might as well offer this too. Or like, there's nowhere else that has synced this close.
So I guess it's here. Yeah. When we're always, it's that like surviving versus thriving mentality, what would it mean for a facility to really thrive? Um, so we did a lot of research and like, not just what is the minimum number of square feet per kid, but what is the best practice number of square feet per kid?
And what, What efficiency pieces do we build in for the teachers so that they can spend their time focusing on the meaningful interactions, not stressed out that the preschool hasn't sent the rinse cup. Yes, because if they don't get the load of.
Dishes in then like every like yeah, if we take all of that stress away what's left and magic is the answer magic Oh my gosh So the big highlights are every single classroom has a dishwasher and an undercounter refrigerator Uh huh, and they're sanitizing dishwashers We throw all the stupid toys and binkies and everything goes in your dishwasher every single night and you don't even think about it.
I haven't thought about finding a water bottle top for the extra water bottles that didn't got washed since the day we started in this building. I used to spend, easy, 20 minutes of my life, every single day, being like, Oh no, I can't find the water bottle tops, because they're still in the dishwasher and someone else, Ah, like, I just have it. Like, somebody else uses your water bottle, so you just, like, put it in the dishwasher and get a new one?
Like, you wouldn't think that that would be life changing. But it saves hours over time. Um, every classroom has their own bathroom. So, for preschool, that means kid sized toilets with barn style half doors directly into the classroom. There's no, like the supervision is just, I, another thing that easy, I'd spend an hour of my days dressing out about who's in the bathroom together, who's going to step in, can I leave this art project to go supervise the bathroom? No, I can't.
So do I ask you to hold it? But you're potty training. So you gotta go like right now, like I haven't had a single one of those thoughts since the day we moved in. Oh my gosh. Because your anxiety level, I'm sure, has just, just like, gone down, just like, wow, we got this, bro. Oh my goodness. Um, other important things. Every classroom has their own attached outdoor pool. So their playground is just theirs and just attached to their classroom. Can they go in and out on as they please?
Do you have the capability to do that? Yeah, man. We're one of the only programs in Washington state. We can prop up double doors and as long as you have sight and sound. You can be in or out. Oh my gosh. You can see and hear all the kids. Have you done that? Is the weather cooperating right now that you've been able to try that? Yes. Really? Last week, it was just like, this is lovely. Oh my gosh. It's so nice. When it's really cold and really rainy, we still have like, come out if you want.
There's a teacher outside. But it's so nice. Oh, my gosh. Oh, that is so amazing. For those three seasons out of the year that it's not snowing three feet of snow in a day. Right. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. We also have big porches. There's more. Um, each classroom has their own porch with enough square footage to do full meal service outside.
Whoa. Um, which because of the rain, we're like just now getting into nice enough weather to like eat snack out in the afternoon as the clouds burn off and that kind of thing. Um, but we can just bring our tables outside through that big double door, baby, and just eat out there. Oh my goodness. We're working up to napping outside. Ooh. That's magical. There's also this like, it's gonna be magical and if you don't sleep and you wanna run around crazy, we want space to have that happen. So, yeah.
Yeah. We'll see how we get, we'll see how we get there. Yeah. Um, so each classroom has that as well. And then off the porch is our fire escape route, which is a double slide Each , , we tested it. The emergency crib fits down 'em, so it counts. Oh my gosh. No way. Yeah, wait. It's the best. Oh my gosh. I love that so much. Like, roll the cribs out down the slide. Yeah. That is so funny. If you needed to, you could. Yeah. Is that the best plan? I don't know.
I mean, you never know what you're going to do. But it passed. But it passed. Yeah. That's amazing. Honestly, nobody even questioned it or doubted it. It didn't even come up and I was like, I spent a lot of time making sure that the, like, width and rise over run of these slides matched what would be acceptable. I wish you would double check my math. Oh my gosh! Oh wow, who would have thought you would have been doing rise over run and slides and baby crits? Oh my goodness.
I was ready to just make my own metal slides, but then I was like, but they're in the sun. Yeah. These are gonna be the spiciest sli Like, they don't wanna burn baby butts. Especially cause they're all like in their diapers in the summertime. Like, runnin around. So, we opted for a dark green. We found the right ones. Oh my gosh. Okay. Yeah. Okay, what else? Uh, each playground has real trees. Yeah! Our last playground was a, like, asphalt commercial parking lot. Parking lot, yeah.
That we had dumped bark chip on, and they wouldn't let us dig anything up, and they wouldn't let us, like, bring anything huge or meaningful, so it was kind of like, well, I guess we're just gonna hang with this until we can go to the trees next door. Yeah, yeah. Um. So you have real trees. There's actually, uh, one of the nursery fields is next to us, and the elk herd that lives in our area has been coming by every day. Oh my gosh.
And it's, they just like munch grass in the sunshine, and the kids are like, good morning elk! And I'm like, this is magic. Like, I don't know. Wow! Just like wild elk. Just like hanging out. Yeah. A herd of wild elk. Just hanging out, man. That's amazing. Just hanging out. Oh my gosh. What kind of trees are they? Uh, mostly dug for, we've got one giant sugar pine on the top of it. We have like a, um, a big hill in the yard, which is great.
That boss said every childhood needs a ditch and I think every childhood needs a hill as well. Yeah. Um, but on the very top of it is this sugar pine tree. And so, and they like dug this really deep hole in the hill. So they call it the volcano. And I was like, well, what's the name of the volcano? And one of the kids was like, well, I call it Mount Pine because there is a pine tree. And then the other kid was like, oh, you mean Debbie? So Debbie, Debbie, AKA Mount Pine. Oh my gosh.
I love those are the trees we have now. Uh, I'm looking for some quaking aspen so that we get some good deciduous leaf play. Yeah, summer to have some deciduous. Floating about, um, and then on the other side of the building is where we're working on our orchard and like community food production gardens. Oh, my goodness. Okay. Tell me about your, um, don't you have built in sensory table things in your? Oh, yeah. I, I'm, I made some custom sinks.
You know how at like hospitals, they have those giant, you always see them in like ER washing their entire arms and like, yeah, big, big bins. Yeah, they're big stainless steel tubs with like lots of sink faucets coming out the top. Yeah. Yeah. So I got one of those that is a foot deep. Yeah. So that kids don't like fall in. But also the. The toddler teachers requested deep enough for a baby. So it had to be deep enough that you could like put a paint covered kid in and wash their feet off.
Yeah. Um, but then low enough that you could reach in and you weren't going to like face plant into the water. So we got one of these stainless steel faucets attached sinks and then we chopped it off. Yeah. The grinder. So they're only a foot off the ground. Oh my gosh. And how many faucets do they have? Just one? Three. Three. Three. Oh! Yeah. Oh my gosh. So do you use that as your sensory table? Or do you, is that just water? For like water and water play? It's just like all the water play.
Yeah. All the water play. We do also have a sensory table. Okay. Um, that we do put like water and soapy bubbles and stuff in because that is technically our hand wash sink. Yeah. So, like, you know, if somebody has to go to the bathroom, there's definitely windows where like, Hey, everybody already went to the bathroom. So we're not too stressed about washing hands right now. But that tends to be more of the water flowing sink. That makes sense.
Um, and then the like water buckets and stuff we do outside just because then we can really get wet and go nuts and not. You know, you stressed out about it. Absolutely. Um, yeah, our favorite thing right now is getting it as hot as we can get it and then sticking our tongue out into the flow and then laughing hysterically about it because they're really high up like the faucet is like a tall swan neck and it's like eye level with the kids. Oh my gosh.
That was also a fun learning curve of like they go to wash something that all the water would go in their face. Yeah, so they've had to learn how to like hold it down and hold it in. Yeah, you know, like how all that and like how to adjust the pressure if you're washing spoons. Um, all those things you don't really think about. There's a learning curve, but you definitely curve when you're like, So I travel a lot. So I got a lot of Airbnbs and all the sinks are different.
So it's like, you know, you just have to be very aware of like how you're holding things underneath the water. You got to get to know your own sink. Oh, absolutely. Oh my gosh. So that, that sink tends to be our washing sink. So we'll put like a Tupperware in the sink and fill it with soapy bubbles. Yeah. Because also they want it to be like maxed, right? Yeah. Toddlers have adjusted theirs down. So it's a very slow flow.
Otherwise the toddlers are just like, there's water everywhere and they like. They like to clog their drain with paper towels a lot, so then there's like a lot of water everywhere. Um, but ours is mainly for flow, so we'll put like a bin of soapy bubbles and then all the paintbrushes or all the animals or all the, and we'll just dump it in there and leave it and somebody comes along and washes it all. Oh my gosh. It just happens, man. I don't have to think about washing paint things hardly ever.
Kids just do it. Just dump it in the sink and somebody washes a brush and then it's done. Oh my gosh! That's so amazing. Um, how often, so you have these really cool bikes. Yeah. What are the bikes called? Because you got another grant for that. We did. We, we've gotten pretty good at grant writing. Yeah! Uh, we've also got this like weird niche, we're rural, we're low income, we're childcare desert, so like we hit a lot of boxes.
Yeah. And then we, we also have this like, we're the only place that does infants. Okay. So there's that like. Equity piece on that end too. So we kind of fit a lot of boxes I'll say. Um, but we got this bike to get, they're called bunch bikes. We got a grant to get the bunch bikes. Um, there are six person cargo bikes. So the teacher rides and there's this, it's like a bike bus and we hook on the battery and we bike, we bike. Yeah. So we have two of those, uh, in the summer.
Somebody's using them almost every day. Oh my goodness. Yeah, that is so cool. Cause we can get to. Several places on foot. But if you're three, you don't have to walk for 20 minutes to get there. And then you do a walk when you're there and then you have to walk home. It's like, yeah, that's not good. I want to, yeah, I want to save the energy for the actual hike in the woods, the actual hike in the woods.
Yeah, not, I mean, like, it is kind of a nice walk to get wherever we're going, but like, I want them to use their energy and the hike in the woods. Um, we discovered that it's like wicked fun. It's better and more fulfilling than any lunch break to hop in a bike. Drive those kids around. Oh my goodness. It's so fun. Aw fun. And then we can go really far. That's how we get all the way up to the Pacific Crest Trail. Right and back. How fast are they go? We bike out.
We don't let them go faster than 10 miles an hour. grandpa, guy and Kurt were like, bottoming out at 30 and I was like, we don't need to do this. . Oh my gosh. Don't put children in there. I'm glad. It's just you two going nuts. , how many kids can fit in one? Six. And then seven if you have the like, yeah, they all wear helmets. Okay. And we have these like, adapter seats for younger kids. Yeah. Infants are kind of like, eh, not as fun if you're a baby, unless you're like, into it.
Um, but generally that like, one year to year and a half, it becomes like, this is awesome. Oh my gosh. So, yeah. Okay. So, it gets us, it gets us to places, but also like, the act of writing is an incredible reset.
So if you're having just like, a struggle bus kind of day, where just like, Everyone is miserable and like you don't have enough time to do everything and like oh, no eight people have pooped in four minutes like Just go on the bikes for 20 minutes, and you come back and everybody's just like I'll have a rest now.
Thank you We don't really bike in the wintertime because like so I need studded tires, then I'm not gonna yeah we also have a If the snow is deeper than a teacher's knees, then we can't, we won't go out in it because we have such that like the kids will be able to just run off and then you can't keep up. Yeah. So, um, we kind of have to wait until the snow melts, which. Our official snowmelt day was last Tuesday. Amazing. There's still a weird pile of snow in our parking lot.
But most of the snow is gone. But most of it is gone, yeah. Is the grass turning green? Yeah. Oh, amazing. Yeah, we're still, we've still got some snow here. A little bit. Yeah. But hopefully it'll be gone within the next few days. Okay, you are the queen of Facebook marketplace finds. Yeah. Tell us some favorite finds that you have found online, like Craigslist, whatever you use, like tell us some of the cool things that you have come across and have in your program.
Uh, one of my favorites is this old beer brewing tank. Yep. And it, it looks just like a giant steel drum with a hole in it. And the kids call it the rocket ship. It does. It looks like a rocket. It looks just like on the moon. We fit like four, three kids in it comfortably for kids if they really want to cram in for some reason. Um, and it's just like a giant bell too. So sitting inside and banging on things is just like, Whoa, man. Yeah. Auditory experience. Um, that's one of my favorites.
That's definitely my favorite. One time we got this magic bike, we called it, that somebody found in a junk pile, and it was like a very tiny two wheeler bike. Oh! It was like, it was the size of a strider bike, but an actual two wheeler bike. Yeah. And the day it went on the playground, every single kid learned how to ride a two wheeler bike. Oh my gosh! Guy was like barely three. Like, by the end of the day, every kid could ride a two wheeler, and I was like, uh, what's happening here?
So that's one of my favorite times. I'm trying to think of like, what other, you still have the alligator. Oh yeah. The alligator is a good one. Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, somebody did some chainsaw art and carved like this really long Gator that we used as a bridge. And we had a mud pit under it that we call the Gator pit. And I saw it pop up my marketplace and I was like, I need this. I need this Gator. Yeah. And I'll text me your address. I'll be there whenever. Oh yeah. You have to haul it though.
Cause it weighs a thousand pounds. And I, it was. Five houses down the street from us. Oh my gosh. Oh yeah, my, my grandnephew goes to your school. Yeah, you can have the gator. Okay, cool. It's seen better days. It got attacked with a shovel last year. Very quick burst of, hey, this is decaying, let's pick it apart moment. But I have some dreams. I have some, I saved all the eyeball, like one of the eyeballs got knocked out. But I saved them all. I think we can, like, refill it with resin.
Cool. Yeah, you could. Then I think it would be like a sick golden gator. Like we could do sequel. Yeah, it would be. Upgrade the gator. Um, I just picked up a playground. It's one of the, it's like a big metal airplane teeter totter thing. Yeah, yeah. That like, three kids sit in it, and then you can tiddle the wings back and forth, um. Okay, when you go I got some culvert my culvert pipe is another good one. Ooh!
I drove I drove by every day for three years at a hardware store, and finally I went in, and I was like, how much for your culvert pipe? And they're like, you want it? Take it! We've been trying to get rid of it for years! And I'm like, what?! So we that's how we got our culvert pipe. Okay, what do you search? Like, how do you, what do you, what's your search keywords that you search for? I set alerts. I have a vintage playground alert. Okay. And I have a culvert pipe alert.
Just like, if you find a good culvert, you gotta get the culvert. Um, I'm, I don't have a lot of free time in my life at the moment, so I also just like scroll through every single local posting. Yeah, yeah. Anytime I'm in a scrolling mood, I click the local and I just go through, because there's not a lot. And if there's something good, then you gotta get it. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Okay. Um, does each classroom have storage? Yeah. There's a full size pantry in every classroom.
And do you use that just for food or is it for all the materials? Oh, we, we put all our materials in there. Yeah. And then we also have, so the kitchens, oh, the kitchens. I, I explained the dishwasher. We didn't even talk about the kitchen. I didn't even talk about the dishwasher, but not the kitchen. Yeah, yeah. We call them home ec labs because if we call them a kitchen, we need seven sinks in every classroom. What? So there are home economics labs. Oh good lord.
There's been a lot, like, we could do a whole nother episode about fighting licensing on dumb rules. Oh my gosh. So, there's a full, like, 8x10 kitchen in every classroom, with a L shaped counter, and a triple well sink. And like the spray hosy nozzle and then cabinets underneath and cabinets up top. Um, so you can stand in the kitchen and see the whole room. You can stand at the kitchen sink specifically. So the sink faces out into the whole classroom.
Okay. Um, so that you never have to turn your back to do dishes. Yeah. And, uh, they're closed off to the kids. No. So the kids can hang out. Around the kitchen. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We unload the dishwasher. This is preschool. Yeah. Toddlers. It's open to toddlers, too. Yeah. Uh, and then infants close theirs off. Cause that's, you don't want a wet floor baby belly. No. Unless you're like, purposefully. Did you do anything specific for that infant room that's different than the other rooms?
They don't have a toilet. Well, yeah, okay. Yeah, I have like a they have a changing table area with a slightly like their changing table is also Well, both of their changing tables because others have a changing table too are visible to the whole classroom as well Yeah, okay And so that was the trickiest part was like how do you get a sink and a changing table? So that you can see everything at all times. Mm hmm and a big part of that is that we never leave through You The main entrance door.
We always go in and out from the playground through the back door. Got it. So that's like, I don't know if you've heard of a kitchen triangle before. No. Um, how much do you want me to nerd, baby? Okay. So I don't know if you've ever read the book or seen the movie cheaper by the dozen. Yes. Uh, yeah. So that the mom, Lillian Gilbreth, Gilbreck, that's her last name. Anyway, she was like a revolutionary industrial organizational psychologist.
And she invented this thing called a kitchen triangle. She had 12 kids. Technically 11 kids at the book time. And like, she had to be able to do all the things quickly. Yeah. And she already studied efficiency for like, Oh, you own an apple orchard picking machine. Like, let's make sure your efficiency is up to speed so that your workers are doing the least amount of damage to their body, but also doing it quickly. So that was like her professional life.
And then she was just like, this couldn't be screwed, yo. So. Cool. The idea that your sink and your refrigerator and your dishwasher need to be in like a nice triangle across from each other. Wow! So that you have this efficiency cycle of like the dishes go here and then I use them for cooking and then I put the food away but then I get the food and like that was her invention. She also invented standard sized cabinets and counter heights. Oh!
So the reason that you can go into Home Depot and say like, I'd like to buy a counter. It's because of her. Or I'd like to buy a dishwasher that fits in my cabinet is because of her. Um, I like her a lot, but classrooms, like nobody's done that for classrooms. No. So I, like when I was making the kitchens in here is when I learned about that kitchen triangle and then I was like, but like, what's the teacher equivalent and I think that it's kitchen sink, bathrooms, outdoors.
Yeah. You can see all three of those things at any point, like evenly distributed in your room. You just like, don't have to think about anything, but having fun with the kids all day. Oh my gosh, you're so brilliant. I just spent a lot of time on this. I've done my 10, 000 hours now. Oh my goodness. Oh my gosh. Okay. Um, really quick before we wrap up, people might be wondering How you get grants like what's your secret sauce for grant finding grants and for getting them?
Yeah, um, we are a non profit that is a very big important piece. Um, and then Really understanding what you want to accomplish and why your community will be better for it Like once you have that that story to tell it's pretty compelling um, I think the other big secret sauce is that We never ask for money To just do a thing. We asked for money to start a program that will be self sustaining by the end of the funding cycle.
So, um, a good example is we trialed some summer camps and we got a grant to pay for teachers for the first years of camp. So that we could. Figure out how to make it work with the community and like, what are the rates that our community can afford? And how do we get a licensed space so that we can get the state subsidy for it? Um, but the goal was like, Hey, here, if this works out, here's how we won't have to ask for any more money.
Yeah. Gave us the start for us to make it across the finish line. Um, and I think that's a very important piece of interesting. Very. Okay. Well, and also like, You can't ask for consumables. Okay, that makes sense Yeah, like people aren't going to want to give you money if then you have to come back next year and say oh But we need money for the same thing again. Absolutely So how can you like be smart about your own budget to say we're going to spend this money on consumables?
And then, like, we're going to get grant funding for these other things. Yeah. That allow us to spend that money on consumables. Or staffing is the big one. It's very hard to get staffing money for this exact reason. Yeah. That unless you have, like, a dedicated funder that wants to, like, continuously fund you, which is really hard to find. Absolutely.
Um, that, like, making sure that you're being smart about, like, asking for the big hot blocks for the STEM project that you're working on this curriculum for versus asking for. You know, like paint, right? Absolutely. Oh my goodness. Okay. That's you have to be clever about it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um, there's one more last thing I'm going to say on it. Uh, if there's a measurable outcome that you can report with, it helps a lot.
So for the bunch bikes, we, we kept track of every single kid that went on every single ride for how long for three years. Oh my gosh. And so then at the end of it, we could be like, okay. You know, Hey, we didn't reach as many kids as we thought we would, but the kids that we did reach got five times as many hours outside as we thought we would going into this project. Wow. Having that like oversight to really look in retrospectively is also really helpful. Oh my goodness.
You have to be really organized for that. Yeah, I'm not that person anymore. I used, I was voted most organized in high school. That's how, that's how cool I was. I am not that person anymore. I have an amazing administrator who is, and she's the one who says like, Hey, let's track this in this easy way. Oh, man. Like what's the checklist that every classroom does every month? Just there. That's brilliant.
Uh, tell people where they can, where they can find you on social media and on the interwebs. Yeah. So play frontier is on Instagram. It's at play frontier. And then our website is www. playfrontier. org. Oh my goodness. Thank you for being here. And thank you for Yeah, thanks for having me! Uh, yeah! Thanks for spilling all the beans! Like Oh yeah! The work that we're It sounds I, I wanna reiterate that it, it sounds like we are very, very lucky. But we have worked very, very hard. Very hard.
Absolutely. We have eaten this elephant one bite at a time. And so wherever you are in the journey, But just like knowing where you want to go, having that vision statement and having that mission statement to get there. Like you can do it. You just have to eat that elephant one bite at a time. Ooh. Okay. I like this analogy. That would take a long time to eat. It does. Oh my goodness. That's brilliant. All right. Um, I podcast. Well, Kristen. Well, Tiffany. It's been fun.
We'll see you next time on Q& A with T and K! T and K! Bye bye! Bye! Oh, yeah, I love it! Thanks! If you liked what you heard today, share this podcast with your coworkers, admin, or maybe even your partner. And I love getting five star reviews so more people can embrace play. Hit follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode. Or connect with me on Instagram or my website, KristenRBPeterson. com. Until next time.