My Supports

I am a preschool teacher and currently I am on summer break. My daily environment looks different in the summer than it does during the school year.
My day starts off (most mornings) with a devotional and prayer time. My supports for this are my glasses, (I couldn't read without them), Bible, journal, pen, and phone, (I have a devotional app on my phone). What are the benefits of these supports?  It helps my in my walk with God, and makes me a better and happier person. On mornings when my kids beat me getting  up, and I don't have the time for my morning God time, I am cranky and not in a good mood.  I image if it was every morning my mood would be bad every day.
After my morning devotional time is kids up, breakfast,  and chore time.  I use a lot of practical supports during this time, such as, dishes and food, wipe board as I make their chore list for the day, and cleaning supplies for what chores they need to do and I need to do.  What are the benefits of these supports? I don't have to wash a family of six clothes by hand, the kids can look at the board to see what they need to do instead of asking me fifty times, etc.
Next is free time and I may talk on the phone with my best friend Maria.  We keep each other somewhat sane. There are days when this is my only adult interaction. It would be very difficult to stay sane during the summer without these phone calls.
Lunch time and the same supports as breakfast are used. After lunch is errands, library, the Y, bowling, or just some type of outing to get us out of the house.  The car is an important support for this. This keeps the kids from fighting and arguing so much, a reason to get their chores done, and something to look forward too. Without this we would be in the house all week, bored, and miserable.
Last  is dinner and family time. We play board games, watch a movie, build a fort, etc. This is something fun for the emotional support and bonding for the whole family. With out this support we would not be as close as we are, I would say this is the most important support of the whole day.

Childhood Connections to Play

As a child, my cousins and myself spent hours playing in the state forest behind my grandparents house. We went camping every year with my grandparents and we spent the day crawdad hunting, wading in the crick, fishing, and frog gigging.   I was always outside. 

 

As I stated earlier, I played outside all the time until the sun set. We lived up a holler with the rest of my mom's side of the family. My cousin and I would hunt with our bb guns, see who could score the highest with my skip it, paint rocks and pine cones gold, and hide them to have a treasure hunt.
Looking back, I often say, "what was my mother thinking, sending me out in the woods all day." There is no way I could send my kids out all day and not know where they were or what they were doing. It was a different era, one that I am sad that today's kids will never know.
Most parents today would be deemed a terrible parent and probably have children services involved if they let their five year old play  unsupervised with a bb gun.
However, if there is ever a zombie apocalypse, I know how to survive the forest. I know what I can eat, how to catch it, and to tell direction based on where the moss is growing.
I would love to see more outdoor/ nature play for today's children. Kid's today have lost imagination, which is important for good mental health (Almon, 2002).

Reference
Almon, J. (2002). The vital role of play in early childhood education. Gateways, 43. Retrieved from http://www.waldorfresearchinstitute.org/pdf/BAPlayAlmon.pdf