I can’t wait to share with you my Q&A With Casey Of Little Life Long Learners today!
Chances are, if you are reading this post, it is because you have babies or young children at home. You love to spend time with them, but how do you get into their world and nurture them through play?
Who is Casey from Little Lifelong Learners?
If you haven’t heard of Casey Patch, you need to head straight over to Instagram and give her a follow. Her account is jam PACKED full of ideas to playfully connect with your kids – from setting up beautiful play spaces, her most amazing backyard of any childs dreams (and mine), fostering independent play, how to regain your play mojo and sensory play ideas, to how to make time for play, toy rotation and SO MUCH MORE!
I love following Casey for ideas for my own children and so many of her family values align with mine. I can’t wait for you to read my chat with Casey. Please leave any comments below for her, and I’ll be sure to pass them on!
Here’s our chat 🙂
Hi Casey, Thank you so much for joining me today it’s a pleasure to be able to chat with you about nurturing our children through play and the outdoors! For those who don’t know, tell me a bit about yourself and Little Lifelong Learners
Thank you so much for having me Lizzy! My name is Casey and I’m a mum to three busy little people who I love adventuring to adventure with to the playground, on bush walks and to the beach! I’m also the founder of Little Lifelong Learners where I support parents in slowing down and connecting with their children through play! As a teacher, I could talk about the benefits of play on your child’s development all day…but for me, I LOVE to use play as a way to connect and create magical memories of childhood with our children!
You run a beautiful membership (which I’m lucky to be a part of) called Little Play Club. Could you tell my community a little bit more about Little Play Club and when doors will open again? (Or how my readers can learn more)
The Little Play Club is kinda like the Mother’s group you always wished you could have been a part of! It’s filled with incredible parents and educators from around the world who all share one simple thing in common – a love of playtime! Each month, we share simple play ideas and videos to help support our parents along their playful journey. We chat about all things play, development and learning with the end goal of helping parents to become purposeful playmates for their little learners! We open the doors to new members a few times a year and we’ll be welcoming new members this week!
Spending quality time as a family is really important to you. How do you juggle business and being present for your little ones?
It sure is and it certainly can be quite the juggle sometimes. I think a big thing for me was giving myself grace in knowing that sometimes our family will need more of me and sometimes our business will require more of me (like during launch periods). I don’t think there’s any such thing as the perfect balance because it shifts and changes depending on the season you’re in! Being really purposeful about how I spend my time when I AM working is probably the key though – being hyper-aware of my big goals and making sure that all the little things I do day to day are helping bring me closer to those goals.
I also make sure to pencil in our adventure days and really purposeful connection time first and foremost when I plan out our weeks! We dedicate one day a week to an adventure day with our youngest before she heads off to school in a few years and then we usually have an adventure day on the weekends with all of the kids too. Those adventure days are my favourite part of the whole week! It’s a bit of a juggling act though because we also want to make sure we have plenty of down time to just be…because life can get super busy sometimes so quiet days in our backyard are sometimes more important than heading out somewhere for the day!
You are located in Brisbane, but are always finding such lovely places to get out into nature. Could you share some of your favourites?
We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful part of the world…but I think there are wonderful places to discover no matter where you live! We adore Shelly Beach at the Sunshine Coast – it’s probably one of our very favourite places to visit because there are gorgeous rock pools but also waves for the kids to splash in and explore! We are there every few weekends during Summer just about! We also adore the Cedar Creek out at Samford – it’s almost right out of a Bluey episode and our kids just love jumping over the rocks, searching for eels and building rock walls!Yourself and your husband Kurtis have worked so hard to create a backyard that nurtures your children and encourages them to be outside. Did you use any particular resources when it came to designing and what did you focus on when choosing equipment?
We did spend A LOT of time on Pinterest saving pictures for inspiration and creating a bit of a mood board with some key elements like our Dry Creek Bed. It was something I wasn’t totally sold on but Kurtis had such a clear vision and it came together so beautifully. The yard has definitely been his domain and I just share some pictures with my ideas along the way and then he executes them haha! When it comes to the equipment, we thought about the kinds of play we wanted to facillitate – like many kids, ours are BUSY with loads of energry so we knew we wanted some monkey bars and spaces that allowed them to get those big wriggles out after a long day at school. We also love watching our girls totally engaged in imaginative play so having spaces like our Studio on the deck and our Mud Kitchen were both super important to us!
If you could choose only 3 items for nurturing learning through play, what would you choose and why?
Ooooh tricky question! I’d go for a mud kitchen purely because they are SO much fun…and the mess is contained outside where I can’t see it haha! Next I think I’d choose some animal figurines because they can be used both inside and outside and can really facilitate so many hours of creative play (especially for our girls who are ALL about this kind of play). And finally, it would have to be magentic tiles. They are such a great resource that spans across so many age brackets including 31 years of age haha!
Thank you so much to Casey for joining me today, she is a very busy lady!
I hope you enjoyed my Q&A With Casey Of Little Life Long Learners. If you are interested in learning more about Little Lifelong Learners, you can do so here. For more information or to join Little Play Club, you can do so here.
Lizzy Hannaford Photography specialises in family photography, and is based on the northern beaches of Cairns. Her main focus is maternity, newborn, and baby photography.
I would love to photograph special memories for your family in my Trinity Park studio, or out on a beach or field location.
If you would like to book a photoshoot with me, please click here, or email me directly at lizzy@lizzyhannaford.com.au
You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
Please note: this post does contain affiliate links. While I do receive a small percentage off my own membership if you used this link, I only recommend it from loving the product and being a member myself for the past two years 🙂
