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 I am here to help you challenge old and outdated practices and inspire you to create a truly developmentally appropriate early childhood environment that fosters creativity, passion, Curiosity and joy in the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. I still wish we could figure out what our opening was. Yeah, I'm sure somebody is listening right now who's just like screaming it in their car. Oh, okay. This is, well, okay. Welcome to the Play Based Learning Podcast. This is Kristen. There we go. This is Tiffany. And this is, and Tiffany's here.
And so, We used to do a podcast together called Q& A with T and K, and if you listened to the last episode, you heard us trying to figure out what our opening was then, and now we're recording again, and we still don't know fully. Welcome to Q& A with T and K! I'm Kristen, and I'm T I don't know. There it was. Perfect. Nailed it. Well, what I do remember is, tell me something good. Do you remember that? Oh, yeah. I think about that. And then we would tell each other something good.
Yeah. Aww. Tell me something good, Kristen. Tell me something good. Um, I've turned into a plant lady since you met me. Yeah. Welcome. Like, major plant lady. You What's your favorite? What's your, like, pride and joy? Your best baby? I have so many. So many, but I think my, uh, Oh, good question. Um, I have ones that I love just because of the way they look, they make me super happy. Um, but then like I have like a rare one that I really love because it's got really cool leaves.
So the rare one is a white princess philodendron. Um, so it's like leaves are white and green. And I love that one. It's just a little guy and I'm trying to get him bigger, of course. Oh, no. Okay. My, my best plant ever is a Swiss cheese, like a mini Monstera. Um, actually I think those are two different ones. It's a mini Monstera, but mini Monsteras are vining. So they climb and some of my vines are at 25, 30 feet long.
Yeah. And they go all the way up and there's five, four or five vines that come out of the pot. And then they all split in two towards the top. But there are, I have like, I don't know, 15 foot ceilings in my living room. And they go all the way up. To the ceiling and I have to wrap them around still. I'll send you a picture, but that's probably my pride and joy. And then the one I think that makes me the happiest is actually right above my computer and it's a fishbone cactus.
Have you ever seen a fishbone cactus? No, I can't be trusted with cactuses. Too damp. Too moist for cacti. Oh, yeah! It's not like a succulent. You only have to water it, like, very infrequently. Um, I can't do cactuses either. This is the only one that Um, yeah, it does fine and I can handle aloe. Those are the only two like cactusy plants that I've been able to keep alive. I've killed like four aloe, but the one I have now is still hanging on. So we'll see.
Yeah, so that's, that's my something good. The plants just make me so happy. Like, it's an addiction and a huge hobby. And I bet I have close to like 50 plants now. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Okay. Tell me something good about you.
Um, it's been sunny and the kids, my kids are just now, Judy's like two and a half and guy is almost seven and they will just like go outside and play and I don't have to like follow a toddler around and make sure they're not putting weird things in their mouth or like just running off. Like they just go outside and play. Oh my gosh. And it's so lovely. That is so lovely. Okay. Remember that time we podcasted at your house and then we decided to go to the dive bar up the road from your house.
Oh yeah. The bungalow mobile home. And we went to the bar and then we had some drinks and then we walked home in the dark and we thought Slender Man was going to get us. Yeah. We like arm and arm walked. All the way on the dark, scary road where there's bears and I was going to say, was that pre or post bear chase pre that was pre bear chase bears. That was like, yeah, bears, bears, bears, and we thought I didn't get chased by a bear once while I was pushing children down that road.
But I think it was, that's why I think it was before the bear chase incident. Or I would have been like, no, we're not. No. And then it wasn't the next morning or something that, um, Kurt was out walking and a porcupine started across the trail or something like that. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I'm coming to visit you. Okay. Um, we're talking about what, so I get this question a lot.
Like, um, How do you do child led learning, emergent curriculum, like, interest based learning in a classroom that has 20 preschool kids? Like, how does one teacher possibly, like, Look at the interests of each child, individually, and like, how can you possibly do it? It sounds so, when you see it, like, written out, or when you see people talking about it, it just seems like, Oh yeah, just like, follow the children's lead, and like, just, just like, do what they're interested in.
And it's like, yeah, but like, how do you do that when you have 20 kids? Or 15 kids? Like, how do you possibly track that? What are, so I just wanted your thoughts. I don't know. I don't think it's a quantity of kids concern. I think it's a years of experience concern. Okay. Tell me more.
Because, okay, so when I first started teaching, I was in survival mode and I was up late at night prepping crap for tomorrow, looking at Pinterest obsessively, finding all the slime recipes like, Oh shoot, I tried this one and it didn't work and it got everywhere and it. Ruined every single apron. Cause now they're glued together. Or like this art project was no fun and no one wanted to do it. And everybody cried.
Like. That's what the first year is until you start getting your like greatest hits album accumulated. And to me, having that greatest hits album is how you can say, Hey, I noticed that this group is mixing colors a lot. And so I think I'm going to make sure that we have like enough weird tiny spoons out tomorrow and I'll just leave them there to see what they do with it. As opposed to like. I'm not coming home each night researching what I think this group will like to do and how to go with it.
Sometimes I'm like, eh, this group likes music and we don't have any musical instruments. So like, you know, sometimes I'm doing that, but a lot of the times it's like, ooh, this reminds me of someone else. I've, another kid that I've had, another experience that unfolded somehow that I can like plop or, you know, Lead us to without a lot of effort on my, my part. It's just like recipes at home that you cook that you don't even think about.
Yeah. Like. I can make Play Doh with my eyes closed, but then you get a new teacher who's like trying out all the different Play Doh recipes and thinking like it's never occurred to them that you could put like tiny graters and nutmeg out with it, like you have to just, and to me, I'm just like, well, I made a pot of coffee and you guys keep wanting to make coffee. So let's make coffee Play Doh. Like it's hot water.
Like I don't put any effort into that because it's the same as cooking a batch of pancakes at home or whatever, you know? Right. I did an interview with somebody and I can't even remember who said this now, but they said if something takes longer than five minutes to set up, they don't do it. I love that rule. Same. Yeah. I'm that way with social media right now. It takes me longer than five minutes to like create something. I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. Yeah. So there's more to it though.
So it's not just that like, Oh, you have to try all the weird stuff and sometimes it fails and sometimes it rocks. And then like, once you get enough, cause that still sounds very. teacher directed. Yeah. But to me, that's where the next piece of the relationship comes in. Yeah. That you have to know that Amelia loved puzzles. Yeah. And unicorn. And so like, how will I bring her joy today? How will she find delight in showing up tomorrow?
Um, and, and then like, that to me is the crux of the childhood learning experiences. How do you show those kids that you've been thinking about them while they're not here? Yeah. Because you are, right? It's not like a fake. Absolutely. It's like, I'm thinking about, I saw this at Joanne's and I was like, yep, we're gonna stick these stickers on everything, you know? And so that, that to me is the core of it, of how are you thinking about them when they're not around?
And then communicating that to them. Absolutely. Okay, so to you, what does child led learning mean? It means that I need to set up an environment that's ready. For every child that walks through the door. Mm hmm. And that's not every child in the whole wide world. No. That's the 14 that came on Monday. You know what I mean? And so how do I make that environment a place where they're validated? And challenged at the same time. How is that? Is it similar or different?
Or would you, how would you define emergent curriculum? Cause like those kind of buzzy wordies go kind of hand in hand. It's like emergent curriculum, child led learning. Is it, is it one in the same? Is it different? I always. Use them interchangeably. Okay. Do you think they're different? I don't. I don't know. And maybe I'm just thinking about it now. Is it the same thing? Uh, something to think about. Something to ponder. I have used it interchangeably as well.
I feel like it, it kind of slants the emergent curriculum sounds fancier. It does. But it also implies that there's like, Yeah, it also implies that like, You're putting together a curriculum. Yeah, or like, you are actually planning ahead, which So this isn't, I plan ahead. Absolutely. Not, not, it doesn't look the same as it did my first and second year's teaching. Right. I plan ahead. Absolutely. Um, I think our best example is, I put out the bird seed.
In the sensory table, right when the weather started getting nice, and it was not on purpose. Yeah, yeah. I just bought 40 pounds of birdseed and needed something to put in the sensory table. I'm like, we got this, it'll be fine. And then we dumped it all, 40 pounds, that day on the playground. Not like, but like one spoonful at a time. Everywhere. Oh my goodness.
And now every child knows this is a Swallow, this is a Junko, this is a Stellar's Jay, that's a Turkey Vulture, what are they doing here? Oh my gosh! And it's just because there were thousands, like, you'd be sitting on the slide and there would be a bird on the side with you. Oh my goodness, that's magical. That to me is where that child led piece is like, they were into it. They were talking about birds. So did you pull out, did you pull anything into that?
Then, besides, like how, did they learn the names of the birds? Is it just coming straight from the teacher's mouth? Or was there, like, other materials you brought in? Or like, how did you do that? Well, we have a lot of, we have my favorite bird identification book.
They are, I think they're like the National Audubon Society field guides and they're printed like the first they're these weird little bricks of a book with a leather plain red cover And the first half is color pictures and the last half is like bible paper scientific names Okay, they're fat. They're like three inch thick books. Okay, and the kids love them I had my grandma had the butterfly and uh something Butterfly and plants once when I was a kid and they're just like precious.
And so we'd be flipping through and I'd be like that, we saw that. Didn't we? And then they'd be, you know, they'd look through and be like, Oh, that looks like ours. Whoa. And so like just having books with real pictures as part of it. Um, I love coloring pages, so hot topic, pages we made, I printed out. Coloring pages of all the birds that we'd seen. And so it was just like an outline of a Stellar's Jay with the word Stellar's Jay below it.
And we just talked about it and we colored them and made paper airplanes out of them. Well, and here's the deal. Like, if you're not forcing children to do a coloring sheet and they choose to do it, that's play. It's the same thing with a worksheet. Like, if you have a worksheet out and a child chooses to do a worksheet, like, that's play. I mean, Um, is it the, is a worksheet the best way to learn the letter B for bird? I don't know. But I'm not, but like, yeah, it's a way, um, okay.
So, uh, so then it's more than just identifying the bird though, because then it becomes which ones live where, and why do the starlings only come through in the afternoon? Oh, interesting. Interesting. And. Like, how come that one sounds like, and that one sounds like there's so many, it's the conversations around it and listening and saying, Hmm, there, how can I think about that? And like, Bring something new to the conversation tomorrow. Absolutely.
Okay. I was just, I'm actually, so I'm in the throes of writing a book right now, and in one of the Yeah, you are. I know. I start with a story about how, like, I used to do handprint turkeys at school. Um, you know, in my traditional teaching days and I would, I would paint their hand for them and then stamp it on the paper and then the next day they'd come and they glued the googly eye on in the beak that I already cut out for them. And one kiddo at one point was like, what is this?
And I was like, well, it's a turkey. I'm like, that's not what a turkey looks like. A turkey is meat and It does not look like this and I and from that point on I was like, yeah, you're right It does it and so we never did turkeys like themed turkeys again until um We were out at forest school and this is after I founded butterfly hill and had the forest school program going and we saw a pack of I don't know if they're called a pack or a flock or what a dazzle gaggle. It's a gaggle.
It's a gaggle of turkeys Yeah. Oh yeah. We saw a gaggle of wild turkeys. And, uh, um, the children were like, what are those? And those are wild turkeys. Like, that's what a turkey looks like that lives out in the woods. And so they wanted to kind of follow them up So we were way behind them and then it was snowing. So they saw a whole bunch of footprints in the snow and they started to have like questions. Cause the turkeys footprints are weird.
Cause it looks like they're walking the other direction, their footprints for some reason, like, yeah, it's like. It's so weird. So they were like, we can't even tell which way they're walking. Like they noticed that they noticed that there's a weird toe on the back. They noticed, um, they noticed poop, of course. And we're like looking at the poop and like checking it out. And like, I didn't know, took the poop look like this. And we found some feathers.
And then when we got back, um, I think it was the next day I had found a turkey wing in our storage room that somebody brought in. Because people hunt turkeys in our area of the world and so we have the whole wing because they just throw the wing away. So we had a wing. I set it out for them to just like explore and then before you know it we've got three kids. One of them was my own. It was Channing.
Um, her and these two little twins were taking scissors and they were cutting the, along the quills, all of the feathers off. So they left the quill but then cut, so it turned into like this feather Yeah. And they collected all the feather dust into a bowl, and then they used that feather dust in an art project later on as like glitter, but they had this turkey wing then that looked like something from Edward Scissorhands. It was amazing.
It was so cool, and they spent hours like shredding this turkey wing very intricately like surgery. It was amazing. It was amazing. And like. That is child led learning. Like we saw the turkeys, we had all these questions, we tried to answer what we could, we went back, dug some things out of the closet, and then like extended the learning and then we were done. Nobody cared about turkeys until the next time we were at forest school and somebody saw tracks and was like, turkey tracks!
And then that was the end of it. And so I feel like emergent curriculum or child led learning is really about that. It's like seeing what children are curious about. And then finding ways to just expand on that curiosity, whether it's by adding books into the classroom or a turkey wing or, um, telling them a story about an experience that you had that, that doesn't even have any pictures or it doesn't even have a book to go along with it.
It's something that you had experienced as a child or whatever it might be. Um, there's so many ways to just bring in Like, bring in little bits here and there, it doesn't have to be elaborate, like we would think a theme would be, like, I remember planning for themes, like, it was so, oh my gosh, it was like every single little thing in the book had to do with that theme, like, why did we do that?
Well, so here's, I'm not pro theme, but I will say, after theming for like three years, I had a ton of stuff. Yeah! So then when we found a frog on the playground, I was like, You guys want frogs? I got frogs. I got a bucket of frog stuff. Right? It became like I used that experience that I, as a young teacher, needed the guidelines to follow to be able to say, well, I've got this bucket of frog stuff and half of it is garbage at this point.
Like, these gems were the real experience and the real learning moments. Yeah. But like, these parts of the frog curriculum were fun and I held dear and we learned a lot. So how can I just say like, oh, you got frogs? I got frogs. Yeah. Like, let's just like Seamlessly take out all the dinosaurs and put in a bunch of tiny frogs to see what happens. And like, I was actually just thinking about frogs. Cause one of our kids really wants to build a frog pond on the new playground.
We have those like Swedish dishcloths for rags and they dry out really crispy and dry. So I was like, Ooh, can I like cut some cool lily pad? And like, Ooh, with some like droppers. And then like these like, so I've packed this away for when we find the real frog. Like, we've got some cool frog stuff to do on the playground and in the water table and in the toilet plate and you know, like, And chia seeds make little, like, frog eggs. Love chia seeds.
Don't put that chia, chia seed shirt in the dryer. Don't put it down the drain. Don't do that. Don't put it down the drain. And did you learn, did you learn that from experience or did somebody tell you that? Learned that from experience. Oh no, what happened? It like re dries as glue. Oh. So all of the, this was the apron example that I gave earlier. All the aprons like glued to themselves and then like toast. Oh my gosh. Done after they made it through the dryer. Oh my gosh.
Okay. Uh, so one time we found tadpoles when we were out of forest school and we brought some back in a bucket with a whole bunch of pond water. And then we put it in a kiddie pool in our outdoor classroom. It was amazing. We put a bunch of rocks in there and we watched those tadpoles. I mean, like, because we brought the bucket full of pond water, they had sludge to eat and they survived. And then one day we came and they were just all gone. Because they hopped out!
It was, it was like a great learning experience. It was like, where'd they go? Remember? Like, we watched them hop little legs and then pretty soon they're just ready to go. Yeah. And they just go. They just hop on. Oh my gosh. That is emergent curriculum. That is like, seeing the great, it's like, being able to feel the core memory before it drops. Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense.
Yes. And I feel like, too, with emergent curriculum, it's, There's not that we shouldn't have this pressure to like, uh, follow the interests of every single child because I mean, a child may find interest in one morning building with magnet tiles and they're already there. Like, and we can extend that a little bit by maybe like throw in some pictures of the house. Or something or a building into the dry erase markers.
Yeah, like there is little things like that that you can do so like everything doesn't have to be this huge experience that sometimes I think we need we make it out to be it can just be little tiny things here and there. Totally. And You can pivot so fast and children's, their, their curiosity changes so quickly that like, sometimes it could be just so fleeting that you don't even have time to elaborate on something before they've already moved on to another thing.
So I feel like we don't need to beat ourselves up so much, like with trying to like find what every single child is interested in all of the time. However, I do, like you were saying earlier, it is so important to build relationships.
to be able to know children, like, really know them, because if you really know them, then you can, I mean, the sky's the limit, really, for like, extending learning, and knowing that, that like, you appreciate them being there, and that you've planned things because of them. Like, I think that is, I love that you said that. So, I think that it's, easier to do when you have a lot of time with them. I think that's the other really important piece. Absolutely.
To me, the best emergent curriculum moments are when we see something in the morning and everybody takes a nap and they wake up to like, Oh, we saw the elk today. I want to tell you the story about it. And like, oops, we've already put out all the journals.
Like that's And so if you don't have, or like the back to back, like If you're here today and we see this and then tomorrow we talk about this and then, hey, remember those last two days, if you don't have a lot of time with that kid, I always feel bad for part time. Yeah, same. Because like for them to remember what happened two or three days ago is just like. Absolutely. It's asking a lot of a kid. It is. And so how do you, you know. Yeah. Do meaningful things with that. Absolutely.
I feel like that's what makes emergent curriculum easier for me is when you're there every day for. Eight hours a day. Like, absolutely. How else? So that's key. It's like those. Yeah. Now, cause in the, at butterfly Hill, we had full time and part time kiddos and yeah, it was much easier to cater to the kiddos interests that you spent a way more time with. And it was like, it almost felt like those part time kiddos kind of fell through the cracks a little bit, just because.
I don't know, you build such a core relationship group, a core community with those kids who are there every single day. Yeah. And then the part time ones come in and it can feel a little bit disjointed sometimes because they just That's just like child development, like they don't, like holding memories of things that far apart.
Lots happened between last time we saw each other and today, you know, and for those kids that are here every day, it's like, Oh, the thing that's happened is we were together for the kids that aren't. It's like, well, you know, I was here and then we went to grandma's and then we went to the grocery store, like, you know, there's more to cram in there. Do you do any sort of documentation still? Oh lordy, I try.
Okay, tell me what your process is now, because I know it's changed and evolved over time. Yeah, I miss deeply. Journaling daily with the kids. Yeah. That like big journal together with pictures of our day right then. That is what really tied everything together for the Emergent Curriculum for me. Absolutely. I have not had the time to do that since. I started doing that after, for a hot minute, after I saw your process of journaling with the kids and taking photos.
And then I would put the photos in the journal and then lay it out on the table for when the adult, like the, the adults from home would come and pick up their kids and they could flip through it if they wanted. But then the journal was also available all the time for kids to flip back and see, oh, remember when? And that was huge too. There was so much conversation that would happen around that book all the time. Yeah. Loved it. Oh. I miss having the time to do that. We're getting closer.
I think it takes, I think, year five in a classroom. Is the year that you have time to do that level of documentation. Absolutely. That's about when it was for me. Yeah. Cause before, I mean, you're really in survival mode when you move, I mean, you've moved to a whole new building, so now you're back at square one survival mode, even though it is magical because you've kind of like really designed the space to be efficient. We're skipping some steps. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um, let's talk about another piece of emergent curriculum though is rituals. Okay. Tell me more. Um, and I say rituals, not routines, because routine sounds like you're going to do the same boring thing every day in the same way. Yeah. Whereas a ritual is this thing we engage in together that we're excited about. Yeah. And so that is sadly where my hand printed turkeys come in.
Yeah. Because one year I made hand printed turkeys because I wanted one for my kid, um, and we did it on like a ceramic plate. Yeah. We have kids for multiple years and they're like, we gonna make turkeys again? Oh my gosh. Yeah, I guess we are. And I guarantee you after this What? There's like a culture that like starts within your community or your own program of like things that happen all the time.
Just because some kids figured it out years ago and then it just always happens because you always have overlap of kids and yeah. Yeah. These are a thing in particular thing I guarantee that decorating the whole classroom for Valentine's Day. I mean, it was always, we love to decorate for holidays just because it feels like gives our. process based art a little bit more purpose of like, oh yeah, we want to hang it up. But this year we hung, like it was our first year with the drop ceilings.
Yeah. And we hung everything up and the kids were just like, it is beauty. Oh my gosh. We're going to decorate for Valentine's Day every year. But, and we also always check in and find our names in the morning. Yeah. And we have a new question on the board every day. Um, Usually it's pretty low key. I like to practice democracy. Sometimes we vote about where we're going to go, what kind of ice cream we're going to get for the party. Like, we want it to be a meaningful vote. Oh, I like that.
Um, and that's where like the ritual is that you find your name and like, I think we're going to have to figure out what kind of direction for this question is going to be every day. And it's also like, hmm, who is here today? Yeah. Oh, my name is here. They haven't forgotten me. Yeah. And I, Notice that my friend hasn't done theirs yet, and I don't want them to miss out, and I want them to do this with me, so we're going to do it together.
So, like, that to me is the ritual, not the routine of it, that, like, we want to partake in this thing together. Yeah. And that is where you can really push your emergent curriculum to be, like, an example for us. We used to move the Rocks with the names and now we have magnets with these giant names. And so like making it, and it's all in this giant chalkboard and it takes up all this space.
And so the ritual is that we answer the question, but it's like, how, what are they interested in right now? How do we make it stick with that? Yeah. Oh, we used to do morning. Well, they still do it. Butterfly Hill morning check in. I love that little one on one time with every kiddo as they came in. I thought that was really important.
Yeah. Yeah. And when we're in a really good journaling, because like the kids have their own journals that they draw in and write in, when we're in a good journaling habit, which usually means like, all the teachers have been healthy for a long time. Because if there's like six different subs every day, then you know we're not getting to like the real nitty gritty emerging curriculum. We are making it through the day. Absolutely.
But when we have that stability and the journals are out, it's like, Oh, we have this, Oh, we're going to start our day by drawing a volcano every day for a week. Like having that little ritual of like, this is a thing that's special to me and to us. Um, then you can kind of push from that, uh, I think of what other rituals. We love to pass out milk and give each other milks and waters. We love to get each other's waters. Now the ritual is you get your water and then like.
Say your letters out loud to each other. And it wasn't anything that I like one day, one kid asked, BR, BR, Bradley, BR. And I was like, yeah, here they all are. They're on there. And now it's like every single kid needs the letters read every day. I didn't do anything that is them interested. And like, that is the core of emergent curriculum that we have. Their names on their things. And we have this. We always put the water bottles in the same place and they find it.
And now they're finding each other's cause they want to bring everybody's waters out and, Hey, your friend got hurt. Can you go get it? Like those little rituals of emergency are also really important. Cause it's not just, what are you putting out on a table? Right. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I never really thought of it in that way of like. And those rituals, they change from group to group because it's really like a lot of them are child led, not all, but like the letters on the cups.
Like that was a child led thing that just happens organically now all of the time. And it may peter out over time, might change and evolve and be something different in a few weeks. And that's what emergent curriculum is. Like that is. It's going by what the children are, what they, you know, what they got going on and letting them take some control over things that happen in some of those rituals and making up their own. And they don't even know that they're making up a ritual. Like yeah.
So true. Yeah. I'm trying to think of like, do we have any, like really, I always tend to talk about the more academic focused ones. Cause I feel like. That's how you speak wolf. Absolutely. Yeah. But like, there, there are plenty of other silly little ones that like, I can't even, I'll think of one. But that like aren't academic, they're just like a thing that we do together because we live here.
Well, so like one of the, the one at Butterfly Hill, I don't know if it still lives on after I left, but, um, there was a lot, actually, I think it probably doesn't because the water tower got taken down, but there was a water tower right across the road from Butterfly Hill. And I was trying to keep the kids occupied for something because the teachers are trying to get all their lunches out on the tables and.
So I started telling a story about mermaids that live in the water tower and, um, like, it just like evolved. And then it was this very intricate story. And then all the children thought there was mermaids in this water tower. And that like lived on that story lived on for years. Because I told to one group and then they just like would talk about the mermaids and the other kids would be like, what about these mermaids?
And then I'd have to like retell a version of the story and it would change and evolve over time. But I mean, even something like that, like a ritual story that lives on. And I, you know, that's a lot to do with like why fairy tales still are a thing. No, definitely. Oh, I thought of one for us. Okay. Tell, tell me at any point in time on any hike, somebody goes and then we all howl for like 45 seconds to a minute. Oh my gosh.
And I think it's, I mean, we always kind of talk about like, you've got to stay with the wolf pack. Yeah. But one time we howled and the toddlers howled back. Oh my God. They were like a couple of trails over and it was just like, Oh my God. That's so cute. Those are the little rituals that. I don't know. Aww. They're important too. They're part of emergent curriculum. And they're magical.
And those are the things that you think about and like, appreciate when you are reflecting on your space and your time with the kids. Mmhmm. Aww. That's so cool. Aww. Well, Tiffany. Well, Kristen. It's been fun. We'll see you next time on Q& A. With T and K. We can end it, but we can't start it. What does that say about us? I don't know. Maybe we had like a pre recorded one. I bet that's what it was. I don't know, but we would always, we probably would say hi to each other.
There had to be a way that we said hi to each other. I mean, now we're going to have to go back and listen. We're going to have to. You're going to have to edit it in. oh gosh. In this episode, . Okay. Tell people where they can find you. Uh, I'm Tiffany Pearsall. I founded and Co-Direct Play Frontier, Carson, Washington. Um, Instagram at Play Frontier in online, www.play frontier.org. Do you even have to tell people www anymore or has that just made you age?
You, I feel like saying Play frontier.org is that. That just doesn't sound like You don't have to type the W's anymore. But it doesn't feel complete without them? So I also, our email is at playfrontier. org Your what? Our emails. Oh, your emails. I'm Tiffany at playfrontier. org. Oh, okay. So I feel like if I don't put the www, then it could just be like I don't know. I don't feel like It feels nebulous. I don't feel like people say www anymore.
Oh. I'm gonna do an Instagram poll on this to see. Could just be old. That is part of it. If you, I'm 37 now. Kristen . Oh my gosh. You're almost 40. I'm almost 40. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be a rocking grandma someday. I cannot wait to be a grandma. What's your grandma name gonna be? Fannie. Oh yeah. I, I weigh my whole life to be Fannie . Yes, you have, um, mine. I haven't decided It's either gonna be Queenie. Ooh, I really wanted to name Judy that you did like from the Bear Queen Teenie.
Uh, more from my Harry Potter, but oh. Who's Queenie in Harry Potter? In the new ones? Is she in the new ones? No. The new ones?! Yeah! Like Fantastic Beasts? With Newt Scamander, yeah! She's in Fantastic Beasts. Oh! Well, you know what? I did know about this a little bit. I haven't seen any of them, but we were just at Harry Potter World, me and my kids, and the wand that I picked out was Queenie's wand. And I should have So Queenie it is. I mean, we've answered the question. You are Queenie.
What else? Oh, it could be Sunny or Boldy. Oh, okay. Yeah. Those are all good too. Yeah. But, I don't know. I just love Queenie. Sunny's a good one. Fanny's great. Well, thank you for listening to the end of the podcast, if you got this far. We made it to the end. Now Tiffany and I want to be called for grandmas. Mm hmm. Okay. Can't wait. I love you. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me.
Bye. 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.