Self Active Play shares with readers the principles and experiences of 30+ years of exploring play through the Institute for Self Active Education and with hundreds of children and educators. Self Active Play delivers: – insights you can use in opening up environments for play; – advice for stocking play spaces with creative open-ended materials; […]
A guide for teachers about the importance of planning learning experiences that integrate child-centered play with rich content-based instruction. Serious Fun emphasizes a teachers’ active role in children’s play in order to guide learning. Organized into two sections, Serious Fun first looks at strategies teachers can use to connect play to learning. The second focuses […]
Play, academics, and standards can work together with the right strategies and support from educators. Take an active role in child-directed play to guide learning. Become a strong advocate for saving play in early childhood education by empowering teachers to join play and standards, and learn how child-led, open-ended play addresses the seven domains and […]
Provide students with purposeful practice and fun activities that focus on detecting, manipulating, and interacting with the sounds of language. Purposeful Play for Early Childhood Phonological Awareness offers 70 lessons that are grouped according to phonological skills and include kinesthetic, visual, and aural representations. Through singing songs, engaging in role-playing games, or tossing balls of […]
Play is serious business. Whether it’s reenacting a favorite book (comprehension and close reading), negotiating the rules for a game (speaking and listening), or collaborating over building blocks (college and career readiness and STEM), Kristi Mraz, Alison Porcelli, and Cheryl Tyler see every day how play helps students reach standards and goals in ways that […]
Are children playing less than they used to? Are rising obesity rates linked to a decline in children’s time to play freely? These and other related questions have filled the pages of newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals for the past decade. Researchers and journalists have attributed these issues to societal changes around children’s lives and […]
For teachers, counselors and school psychologists, Play, Learn, and Enjoy! is a social-emotional learning curriculum for elementary school children that bridges self-regulation skills with social-emotional competencies. It covers a broad range of self-regulation and social skills including executive functioning (attention, working memory, and inhibition), strategic skills (time-management and planning), self-awareness, emotional regulation, decision-making, communication, and […]
Engage Students with Toys, Games, and Comics In Play Like a Pirate, Quinn Rollins offers practical, engaging strategies and resources that make it easy to integrate fun into your curriculum. Regardless of grade level, serious learning can be seriously fun with inspirational ideas that engage students in unforgettable ways.
Always the Cinderella of the education system, the significance of early years has been seriously under-estimated. Play is the Way brings together leading practitioners, policy-makers and academics to explain how a coherent approach to early years – centred on positive relationships and play – will not only result in better educational performance but in greatly […]
As fewer children have access to natural play areas, and as health and educational professionals increasingly realize the value of play in both physical and emotional development, this collection of essays on play provides a timely look at current trends in play theory and practice. Editors Mary Ruth Moore and Constance Sabo-Risley continue to build […]
With growing numbers of children living in poverty and standardized tests becoming increasingly important, there’s never been a better time for a volume of essays on the value of play in mental and emotional development. Mary Ruth Moore and Constance Sabo-Risley honor and build upon the work of Joe L. Frost, the father of play […]
In light of recent standards-based and testing movements, the issue of play in child development has taken on increased meaning for educational professionals and social scientists. This third edition of Play From Birth to Twelve offers comprehensive coverage of what we now know about play and its guiding principles, dynamics, and importance in early learning. […]
The leading text in the field, Play at the Center of the Curriculum seamlessly combines the features of a text on play and development with the features of an early childhood curriculum text to present a comprehensive, cogent rationale for placing play at the center of a balanced curriculum. Ideal for those who want to […]
How do we save play in a standard-driven educational environment? This edited collection, Play and Literacy: Play & Culture Studies provides a direct answer and solutions to this question. Researchers and theorists have argued for decades that play is the best way to learn language and literacy for children. This book provides theoretical and historical […]
More than any other textbook on the market, Play and Child Development, Fourth Edition, ties play directly to child development. The authors address the full spectrum of play-related topics and seamlessly blend research, theory, and practical applications throughout this developmentally-based resource. Readers will learn about historical, theoretical, and practical approaches to promoting development through integrated […]
Discover why school readiness IS children’s play. This updated guide includes timely research and new stories that highlight how play is vital to the social, physical, cognitive, and spiritual development of children. Learn the seven things we must do with children every day and why they are so important. Use your daily observations to incorporate […]
Let children experience the learning power of play. Children’s play is focused, purposeful, and full of learning. As children play, they master motor development, learn language and social skills, think creatively, and make cognitive leaps. This (un)curriculum is all about supporting child-led play, trusting children as capable and engaged learners, and forgoing packaged curriculums and […]
Play is how children explore, discover, fail, succeed, socialize, and flourish. It is a fundamental element of the human condition. It’s the key to giving schoolchildren skills they need to succeed–skills like creativity, innovation, teamwork, focus, resilience, expressiveness, empathy, concentration, and executive function. Expert organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Academy […]
Children must learn to pick themselves up, brush themselves off, and bounce back. But how do you allow for the physicality required to build resilience when you are tasked with children’s safety? This guide provides the tools and strategies for creating a culture of resilience, including families in the process, and keeping safety front-of-mind. Examine […]
From Play to Practice describes how and why play is important. The play workshop experiences for educators that are outlined in the book help teachers understand and promote play-based learning as part of developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs. Journal reflections of play participants, along with photos from play workshops, illustrate the power of […]
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A) Playing, being playful, is the healthiest way to spend your time (after feeding and housing yourself).
B) The activities that evoke playful feelings are unique to each of us.
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