Waldorf Games Handbook for the Early Years


Book Description

Waldorf Games Handbook for the Early Years - Games to Play & Sing with Children aged 3 to 7 A offers a handy guide to playing games with young children. This classic games book offers a standby resource for parents, teachers, forest school educators and play leaders. The games are tried and tested. They draw on worldwide Steiner - Waldorf creative education, where a child's work is their play. Child growth is explored and how this is helped by a rich treasury of action, finger, circle, clapping, beanbag, chasing, water, tumbling, story and singing games. There are both traditional favourites and also new games created to engage with digitally challenging behaviour.




Sensory Play for Toddlers and Preschoolers


Book Description

Explore taste-safe small worlds, create colorful pieces of art, and engage all five senses while investigating the great outdoors. Sensory play is a wonderful way to explore the world with your little learners! Sensory Play for Toddlers and Preschoolers is a practical, hands-on guide for parents and educators who want to inject more play into their children's day! Since this collection features simple sensory play ideas with items you already have in your home, playtime has never been easier. Inside the book, you’ll find forty easy sensory play tubs and activities with extra bonus ideas for extending the activities even further! Not only will your child be learning and exploring through play, but you’ll also be creating some magical memories of playtime that will last a lifetime! Learn how to get started with sensory play using tips, tricks, and sensory play staples. Follow quick and easy, tried and tested sensory base recipes designed to ignite the senses and inspire hours of sometimes messy, always memorable playtime. Create thoughtful sensory invitations and artworks while developing fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, early measurement concepts and so much more! Sensory play allows our little learners to make connections as they explore the world around them using their senses of sight, smell, taste, sound, and touch. It’s the beginning of a lifelong journey of scientific understanding and a wonderful way to connect and bond with your little learners! Projects include: Rainbow Rice Cloud Dough Sand Foam Edible Mud Water Tub Rainbow Spaghetti Frozen Building Blocks Outdoor Kitchen Jell-O Bug Rescue Bubble Wrap Paintings and more!




Einstein Never Used Flash Cards


Book Description

Now Available in Paperback! In Einstein Never Used Flashcards highly credentialed child psychologists, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph.D., with Diane Eyer, Ph.D., offer a compelling indictment of the growing trend toward accelerated learning. It's a message that stressed-out parents are craving to hear: Letting tots learn through play is not only okay-it's better than drilling academics! Drawing on overwhelming scientific evidence from their own studies and the collective research results of child development experts, and addressing the key areas of development-math, reading, verbal communication, science, self-awareness, and social skills-the authors explain the process of learning from a child's point of view. They then offer parents 40 age-appropriate games for creative play. These simple, fun--yet powerful exercises work as well or better than expensive high-tech gadgets to teach a child what his ever-active, playful mind is craving to learn.




Purposeful Play


Book Description

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 in-their-seat instruction alone can't do. And not just during playtimes. "We believe there is play in work and work in play," they write. "It helps to have practical ways to carry that mindset into all aspects of the curriculum." In Purposeful Play, they share ways to: optimize and balance different types of play to deepen regular classroom learning teach into play to foster social-emotional skills and a growth mindset bring the impact of play into all your lessons across the day. "We believe that play is one type of environment where children can be rigorous in their learning," Kristi, Alison, and Cheryl write. So they provide a host of lessons, suggestions for classroom setups, helpful tools and charts, curriculum connections, teaching points, and teaching language to help you foster mature play that makes every moment in your classroom instructional. Play doesn't only happen when work is over. Children show us time and time again that play is the way they work. In Purposeful Play, you'll find research-driven methods for making play an engine for rigorous learning in your classroom.




Play Activities for the Early Years


Book Description

Play Activities for the Early Years contains over 140 fun activities to encourage purposeful play. There are six chapters: communication, language and literacy; mathematical development; knowledge and understanding of the world; creative development; physical development; and personal, social and emotional development. The activity pages are clearly laid out and well illustrated, making the book easy to use. Many of the activities have accompanying blackline masters providing a variety of written and pictorial resource material.







Science and Technology for the Early Years (2nd Edition) - Purposeful Play Activities


Book Description

Well-planned play opportunities enable young children to learn and develop. This book is divided into two sections. The first contains ideas on how to design resource areas to stimulate purposeful play. The second contains 120 planned science and technology activities divided into the following chapters: All about people; Changing materials (food); Animals; Variety of materials; Plants, leaves and flowers; Light and colours; The outdoor environment; Sound; Exploring materials; Movement and forces; Joining materials; Electricity The activities are clearly laid-out with the Purpose, Resources and Safety points given, as well as 'Challenges', which can be used to provide a focal point for each activity. Assessment is an integral part of the book and the activities are linked to the seven areas of learning and development and the Early Learning Goals of the revised Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (September 2012), as well as to the National Curriculum for Science in Key Stage 1, to provide a smooth transition for children as they move from the Foundation Stage to Year 1.







Play and STEM Education in the Early Years


Book Description

This edited book provides an overview of unstructured and structured play scenarios crucial to developing young children’s awareness, interest, and ability to learn Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in informal and formal education environments. The key elements for developing future STEM capital, enabling children to use their intuitive critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, and promoting active citizenship and a scientifically literate workforce, begins in the early years as children learn through play, employing trial and error, and often investigating on their own. Forty-seven STEM experts come together from 16 countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, Finland, Germany, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and the USA) and describe educational policies and experiences related to young learners 3–4 years of age, as well as students attending formal-nursery school, early primary school, and the early years classes post 5 years of age. The book is intended for parents seeking to provide STEM activities for their children at home and in playgroups, citizen scientists seeking guidance to provide children with quality educational activities, daycare practitioners providing educational structures for young children from birth to formal education, primary school teachers and preservice teachers seeking to teach preschool, kindergarten or children typically aged 5–8 years old in grades 1–3, as well as researchers and policy makers working in science didactics with small children.




Multiple Perspectives on Play in Early Childhood Education


Book Description

While teachers value children's play, they often do not know how to guide that play to make it more educational. This volume reflects current research in the child development and early childhood education fields.