Nature Created Play

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The best loose parts for summer play are already in your yard, on your street, and under every tree you walk past. Sticks. Rocks. Mud. Leaves. Water. Free, open-ended, and more powerful for your child's brain than most things you could buy.

Save this one and take it outside with you this week. Let your kid lead. Watch what they do with a stick and a puddle and zero instructions.

You might be surprised.

What loose part does your kid go straight for? Tell me below. 👇

Summer looks chaotic from the outside. But your kid? They're running experiments.

Throwing, hauling, spinning, burying themselves in sand. None of it is random. It's called schema play, and it's one of the most important things happening in your child's brain right now.

Save this before camp starts. Because when the throwing won't stop and the rock pile keeps moving across the yard, you're going to want to remember this.
They're doing the work.

Which schema does your kid run the hardest? Tell me in the comments. 👇

The most powerful play invitations in your classroom might already be sitting outside, in your recycling bin, or at the bottom of your supply closet.

Nature invitations don't require a trip to the store or a Pinterest-worthy setup. They require curiosity! Yours and theirs.

Put something out. Keep it simple. Watch what children do with it.
That's the whole framework.

👇 Which material are you trying first? Tell me below OR share this with a teacher who thinks they don't have enough to work with.

No lesson plan. No theme. No Pinterest board.
Just this: time, space, and your yes.
That's it. That's the whole summer plan.

Here's what happens when we stop filling every minute and just... let them outside?

The sticks become swords and bridges and measuring tools. The dirt becomes a kitchen, a construction site, a science lab. The "I'm bored" lasts about four minutes before something extraordinary starts happening.

Kids need us to get out of the way long enough for all the good stuff to show up.

So this summer, the most powerful thing you can offer isn't a schedule. It's an open yard, a loose yes, and the willingness to let it get a little messy.

That's nature created play.

Drop a 🌿 below if you're giving yourself permission to slow down this summer. (And yes, if your kids aren't used to this there WILL be an adjustment period!!!)

That thing driving you a little nuts? There's probably something really smart happening underneath it.

This carousel is for every teacher and parent who has ever thought "why do they keep doing that"; because the answer is almost always more interesting than the behavior itself.

Children are not giving us a hard time. They are having a hard time, or building something, or testing something, or just being exactly where they are developmentally.

Save this one. You'll want it for a parent conversation or a rough afternoon.
👇 Which slide hit closest to home? Tell me in the comments.

The behavior driving you nuts this summer? It might be a schema doing its job.

Throwing. Dumping. Climbing. Repeating the same thing over and over and OVER.

It can feel like a lot. It's okay to admit that it's exhausting.

What looks like chaos is usually a child's brain working really, really hard.

Schemas are the repeated patterns of play that show up when kids are deep in learning. They're not misbehaving. They're building neural pathways, testing theories, and figuring out how the world works.

That kid throwing everything off the shelf? Trajectory schema. The one dumping every bin in the room? Transporting. The child who needs to line things up in the exact same order every single day? Positioning.

Once you can name what you're seeing, everything changes. You stop trying to redirect the behavior and start asking, "How do I support this safely?"

That one question makes summer a whole lot more manageable.

Save this for the next time a behavior is driving you up the wall. You might just be watching a little scientist do their best work.

Does your child line everything up in rows? Wrap ALL the things? Spin until they fall over? 🌀

That's not random. That's a schema at work.

Schemas are the repeated patterns of play children use to understand how the world works. When we recognise them, we stop redirecting behaviour and start supporting it. 🙌

Save this carousel and share it with your team! Because when everyone in the room understands schemas, the whole environment changes.

👇 Drop your child's (or class's!) dominant schema in the comments. I'd love to hear!

A kiddo who is doing something over and over again is in a deep place of learning. While as an adult, we sometimes find these behaviors annoying, I encourage you to think about something you used to do a lot as a kid and what you learned from it!

We're you always mixing things into your food? We're you always spinning around in circles? Were you constantly trying to jump off higher and higher places? All of those are schema in action!

And understanding that it's a totally normal and healthy part of development gives us a better understanding of both ourselves and the kids we work with.

When a child is knocking over wooden blocks and we swap them for foam ones, we think we've solved it. But here's what we actually took away: the sound of the crash, the weight in their hands, the heft and resistance of something real.

They were running an experiment.

Redirection fails when we remove the very variable the child was trying to understand. The behavior wasn't the point the *information* was.

So before we redirect, it's worth asking: what is this child trying to figure out? And can we protect that learning while shifting the context?