GREDC

Our Image of Childhood

The GREDC Blog

Recent Study: Risky Play

Tom Dodd

Risky play in early childhood is an important way of encouraging children’s development of self-confidence, resilience, executive function abilities as well as risk management. It is something that changes with each child and their own unique ability.

Standing for the first time is risk taking at some point in life, while so is wrestling with a peer, or jumping off a platform.

Research indicates that engaging in risky play even has the longer term benefit of reducing the risk of injury!

An important part of risky play for our teachers is to facilitate, in a safe environment, the play that is happening and we are looking forward to the discoveries that are made during the study.

Other Recent Posts...

Judah constructs his prototype
Tom Dodd

Judah’s Bridge

For several weeks Judah had been adamant that he wanted to design a rope bridge for the playground. He showed us where it should go and discussed materials that should be used. We spoke about how we could promote the idea to everyone else and then decided to build a

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Tom Dodd

Playground Redesign

These conversations set us off on a school-wide, child-led project to improve our outdoor areas and work out how to make the best use of the space we have. Our students made many requests for items like real life fire trucks, swimming pool, more water play, pirate ship, bridge and

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Tom Dodd

Gigi’s Garden

The garden contains several raised garden beds and lattice trellises within a safely enclosed space. Children of all ages use the garden to explore, experiment with plants, water, and bugs, and learn about life cycles and nature.

Read More »

Lauren Huyck

Mentor Teacher

B.S in psychology and writing
A.A. in early childhood education
Teaching since 2010

My name is Lauren Huyck and I am the afternoon lead for the Scoperta classroom. I started as a teaching assistant when the center was still part of Aquinas in 2010. When we became the GREDC in 2012, I stayed on. In 2014, I was excited to accept the role of lead teacher.

I have a Bachelors in psychology and writing, and an associates in early childhood education. I am currently working on getting a Masters in psychology with a concentration in child development.

I love seeing the children grow and learn. There are so many developmental milestones that I get to see and experience. I fell in love with the Reggio approach and work to incorporate it in all my experiences with children. It has definitely taught me to treat children as citizens of the world.

I honestly could go on about how much I love the work I do and how passionate I feel about every child having quality care but that would take eons. So I will end with these two quotes:

“To take children seriously is to value them for who they are right now rather than adults-in-the-making.”

Alfie Kohn

If you trust play, you will not have to control your child’s development as much. Play will raise the child in ways you can never imagine.

Vince Gowmon