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Playvolution HQ Podcast

Playvolution HQ Podcast

By: Jeff Johnson
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 The Playvolution HQ Podcast dives deep into play and early learning, from loose parts and power play to school readiness and curriculum. This weekly, short-format show goes beyond the resources available at playvolutionhq.com, delivering original content like DIY ideas, terminology deep-dives, commentary, news, early learning history, and more.Explorations Early Learning Parenting & Families Relationships
Episodes
  • PHQP_0024 Proprioception And School Readiness

    PHQP_0024 Proprioception And School Readiness
    Jun 16 2025
    In PHQP_0024 Proprioception And School Readiness, Jeff explores proprioception, the body's ability to sense its position and movement, and its critical role in preparing young children for school. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0024 Proprioception And School Readiness Episode Notes Proprioceptive System Balanced And Barefoot | Quote 02043 The Important Role Of Kinetic Chains In Early Learning 5 Simple Ways to Support “Heavy Work” Balanced And Barefoot | Quote 02289 Balanced And Barefoot | Quote 02544 Balanced And Barefoot | Quote 02555 Heavy Work Simplified Balanced And Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children The Proprioception And School Readiness Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I'm Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on with the show. So, uh, I, uh, if you listen to the show, I've been, I've been, I talked about this before. I decided I was going to learn to play the guitar. That's going to be my new scary thing. And a little bit of an update. I've started developing finger calluses. You can't see them, but I can feel the skin getting thicker on my, on my fingers because of the, uh, the pain of, of the guitar strings. And that's, that's one of the amazing things about our bodies. Our bodies are adaptive. And so after a while, it's not going to be so painful to play. But the other big thing I've found is, uh, related to the topic for the day, proprioception. I am, I was amazed at how poor my proprioception is in relation to the skills you need to learn how to play the guitar because, um, well, we'll get into proprioception in a little bit, but it's about awareness of, of your body's position in relation to other parts of your body in part. And I've got to be able to put my left index finger and my left, left middle finger, my left pinky, all in specific places. Well, my heel is tapping. Well, my right thumb is strumming in the right direction and it's, it's a lot. And, and so one of the, one of the struggles for learning something like this, especially when you're, you're old, like I am, is it literally takes rewiring the brain to build these, these new skills that, that come naturally when we're in kids. And that's why for our topic today, I wanted to get into, um, proprioception and school readiness because maybe if I would have been more proprioceptively prepared in kindergarten, I'd be a better guitar learner now. I don't know if that's true or not, but something we're thinking about. So I wanted to dig into proprioception and its relation to school readiness because, you know, we talk about school readiness in the early learning field a lot, and it's about ABCs and blocks and knowing how to write your name and, and things like that. But a big part of it is having your body physically ready to do the job of going to school. And a lot of kids are heading off to school with bodies that are, are not ready. And part of it is the way we handle programming in early learning settings. And part of it probably has to do with, uh, with other things like, uh, you know, how, how human children have never been more sedentary than they are right now in 2025. Um, and so really proprioception is, is a, is a big part about body awareness. And so let's get into a little bit of that. Um, part of it is being aware of where body parts are in relation to other body parts. Now for just walking around, your brain needs to be aware of where your left heel is and where your right toes are and where your left elbow is and where your right elbow is, and the position of your head and the position of your torso and all of this. Your body, your brain has to be aware of, of all of those things to coordinate things like walking. For me, I'm struggling with the guitar. It's, it's the, the awareness of where individual fingers are in relation to other individual fingers. And this is,
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    17 mins
  • PHQP_0023 Fit For Care

    PHQP_0023 Fit For Care
    Jun 9 2025
    In episode PHQP_0023 Fit For Care, Jeff examines why early learning programs should consider adopting staff fitness standards, as well as making accommodations for staff who are unable to meet such standards when necessary. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0023 Fit For Care Episode Notes No special notes for this one. The Fit For Care Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ Podcast. I'm Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on with the show. So, a little update, a couple, a handful, I don't know, maybe a dozen episodes back, I was talking about a kid playing at taking the garbage out, doing all kinds of spins and twists and flips with the garbage bag. My wife, Tash, reported the other day that she saw an adult male doing kind of the same thing. He was doing curls with the garbage bag, one hand and then the other, as he walked it out to the trash receptacle from the house. So, I like to see that it's a, at least a multi-generational activity, that we humans find ways to entertain ourselves, even with mundane chores like hauling out the trash. So, topic, the only one for this episode, is caregiver fitness standards. I think a lot of people underestimate the physical demands of working in early learning programs. Now, in the burnout work that I do, I talk a lot about the emotional labor that we do, dealing with the emotions and feelings of people that we interact with. But there's also a lot of physical labor, if we're going to do this work. There's hefting and toting of kids up and down off of changing tables, and there's moving of equipment, and there's hopefully running and chasing around with kids outside and inside, and getting our hearts pounding. And then maybe in emergency situations, there are things we need to do, and that requires a certain level of physical fitness. And I don't know any kinder way to say this, but some early learning staff are not physically fit for the job of working in early learning. They're incapable of meeting all of those physical demands, and to some extent, that's okay. This is a sensitive topic because of that, but look, accommodations and inclusion are really important around this topic. I've met over my 30-ish years working the field a number of caregivers who would fall short of the physical requirements for doing the job for one reason or another, and who are incredibly gifted in other areas of the work that I would want them not in the field. So I think for many people, accommodations can be made, and we want to include people in this profession with differing abilities. And we do need some level of fitness for probably the majority of staff in the majority of programs for a number of reasons that we'll get into. So I'm not trying to be a jerk talking about this topic, and I don't want to exclude or forbid people from working in the field because they physically can't do certain things, but I think it's something we need to discuss. Sedentary adults encourage sedentary kids for one thing. I've said it many times, we live in a world where human children have never been more sedentary than they are right now in 2025. And if we want kids to be moving more, it's probably a good idea to surround them with adults who are moving more. And so programmatically, having more physically active, physically capable, physically interested adults is probably a good idea, just from a curriculum standpoint. If we want kids to move, we need them to be around adults who can and do move. There's also a relationship here to burnout, because over the years, I've written a couple books and done a lot of speaking and thinking about burnout in this profession. And I've noticed this kind of burnout fitness spiral, and it tends to happen to people because when you work in this profession, you do that emotional labor, and you start burning out. Burnout puts blinders on you, and you get kind of this narrow focus, and you burn up a lot of emotional energy.
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    15 mins
  • PHQP_0022 Reliability And Validity Testing

    PHQP_0022 Reliability And Validity Testing
    Jun 2 2025
    In PHQP 0022 Reliability And Validity Testing, Jeff reflects on the long, unstructured summer vacations of his childhood, contrasting them with today’s shorter, adult-scheduled breaks that limit children’s freedom to self-regulate and pursue their interests. Then, he critiques the lack of reliability and validity testing in early learning accreditation and quality rating programs. Episode Video Watch Now: PHQP_0022 Reliability And Validity Testing Episode Notes No notes for this one! The Reliability And Validity Testing Transcript Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I'm Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on with the show. So, recently, coming back from Minnesota where I did a live weekend training, I had a great conversation with an Uber guy. We were about the same age and we got talking about summertime back when we were kids and going to the drive-in movies and jumping our big wheels off of things and fireflies and adults not really worrying about us and letting us play and have a good time and how that wasn't always perfect. It was often wonderful playing outside till the streetlights came on, all of that kind of stuff, and it was a nice chance to reminisce with a peer, which got me thinking about topic one for this episode of a two-topic episode. A couple weeks after that, just a couple days ago now, I run into a kid. He comes over to say hi to Gigi, my pup, when we're out on a walk and I say, hey, I hear you. Yesterday was the last day of school. He looks at me like I'm an idiot and he says, no, I have to keep going back until I'm almost an adult. He's not off of school. He's just on a short break until he's got to go back and then go back and then go back until he's almost an adult. That kind of struck me as funny because back in the day, back when me and that Uber driver were kids, summer vacations seemed to last forever. I dug into this a little bit and it turns out that total school days hasn't changed much since the 50s and maybe even earlier, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. It ends up being around 180 days of school and every state and every district's got their own thing, but that seems to be about the average across the U.S. What has changed is how those days are disbursed. We used to have a big block of time off during the summer, back in the day. It was almost from the end of May, beginning of June, to the end of August. Now it is often much, much shorter than that. The days off hasn't changed. They disperse them different because there's more days off during the school year for teacher work days and slightly longer spring breaks and those kind of things. Maybe those things are good, but what those things are mostly for is to make things more convenient for adults. Look, I get that, but what's missing is those short summer vacations do kids a disservice because we don't have the time to decompress and be away from adults and follow their own interests and have that freedom that we had back in the day. That's something that's missing because one of the troubling things about modern childhood is kids are always under the thumb of somebody else's schedule and somebody else's timeline. It's really hard to learn how to self-regulate and know your own mind and follow your own interests when somebody's always shuffling you from this activity to that activity. Longer summers would do a lot for kids. Of course, that's not going to happen. On topic two, that was kind of depressing, and this topic is going to be depressing too, if you want to take it that way. It gets in my head every once in a while. I got to think about reliability and validity testing a couple weeks ago, and I decided we needed to do an episode about it because a lot of times in early learning settings, we don't think about this. Reliability and validity testing is a thing. Accreditation programs and quality rating systems should take advantage of this thing,
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    13 mins
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