Children, Play, and Development offers a comprehensive look at children′s play from birth to adolescence.

This book provides new theoretical insights to our understanding of play as a cultural activity. All chapters address play and playful activities from a cultural-historical theoretical approach by re-addressing central claims and concepts in the theory and providing new models and understandings of the phenomenon of play within the framework of cultural historical theory. Empirical studies cover a wide range of institutional settings: preschool, school, home, leisure time, and in various social relations (with peers, professionals and parents) in different parts of the world (Europe, Australia, South America and North America). Common to all chapters is a goal of throwing new light on the phenomenon of playing within a theoretical framework of cultural-historical theory. Play as a cultural, collective, social, personal, pedagogical and contextual activity is addressed with reference to central concepts in relation to development and learning. Concepts and phenomena related to ZPD, the imaginary situation, rules, language play, collective imagining, spheres of realities of play, virtual realities, social identity and pedagogical environments are presented and discussed in order to bring the cultural-historical theoretical approach into play with contemporary historical issues. Essential as a must read to any scholar and student engaged with understanding play in relation to human development, cultural historical theory and early childhood education.

A textbook for undergraduate and graduate courses in Play; also appropriate as a supplement for Child Development and Early Childhood Education courses. With significantly expanded discussions on key topics, this text ties play directly to child development. Addressing the full spectrum of play-related topics, including age-group chapters, its coverage is quite comprehensive and blends research, theory, and practical applications. Play and Child Development, Fourth Edition, is arranged to guide students through topics leading to a comprehensive understanding of play intended to help prepare them for guiding children's play in a number of contexts: preschools, elementary schools, park systems, and research programs. The text is developmentally-based, providing basic information about historical, theoretical, and practical approaches to promoting development through integrated play and learning approaches across various age or developmental levels. The book analyzes play theories and play therapy; presents a history of play; and discusses current play trends. It explores ways to create safe play environments for all children, and how to weave play into school curricula. Finally, the authors examine the role of adults in leading and encouraging children's natural tendencies toward learning by playing. Special coverage includes a full chapter on play and children with disabilities, and the value of field trips in supporting learning.

Young Children’s Play: Development, Disabilities, and Diversity is an accessible, comprehensive introduction to play and development from birth to age 8 years that introduces readers to various play types and strategies and helps them determine when intervention might be needed. Skillfully addressing both typically developing children and those with special needs in a single volume, this book covers dramatic play, blocks, games, motor play, artistic play, and non-traditional play forms, such as humor, rough and tumble play, and more. Designed to support contemporary classrooms, this text deliberately interweaves practical strategies for understanding and supporting the play of children with specific disabilities (e.g. autism, Down syndrome, or physically challenging conditions) and those of diverse cultural backgrounds into every chapter. In sections divided by age group, Trawick-Smith explores strategies for engaging children with specific special needs, multicultural backgrounds, and incorporating adult–child play and play intervention. Emphasizing diversity in play behaviors, each chapter includes vignettes featuring children’s play and teacher interactions in classrooms to illustrate core concepts in action. Filled with research-based applications for professional practice, this text is an essential resource for students of early childhood and special education, as well as teachers and coaches supporting early grades or inclusive classrooms.

Why do children play and why do they stop playing? David Cohen's book answers these questions in light of recent research. Psychologists argue that children play to learn how to move, how to speak, how to think, how to cope emotionally, how to be imaginative, and how to interact with other people. David Cohen suggests that we need to look at the origins of play in the family, and excamine how children play with objects, language, and with each other and their parents. "An excellent critical appraisal of research on play. Cohen offers a refreshing open perspective, although he acknowledges that we seem to need a serious reason for play in order to justify studying it....Very readable and entertaining." —Choice

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

Where do children go and what do they do outdoors? How do they evaluate their own environment? What are their likes and dislikes? What would they like to see added or changed? How can the outdoor environment support healthy child development? How is the impact of the environment affected by its social and physical characteristics? How can its developmental impact be strengthened through public policy? These are some of the questions addressed by Childhood’s Domain, originally published in 1986, in which children, as ‘expert’ research collaborators, describe their largely unseen life outdoors. On field trips to secret play places around their homes, in streets, in parks, and in places laid waste and abandoned by adult society, they reveal both the pleasure and difficulties of play in the city. A central concept of the book is a new term, terra ludens, which represents the accumulated developmental support that each child receives from her or his personal play spaces. Terra ludens reflects the degree to which each child acquires an intuitive sense of how the world is by playing with it. Field research for the book was conducted in London, Stevenage New Town and Stoke-on-Trent. Neighbourhood sites were deliberately chosen to contrast and compare children’s reactions to the characteristics of ‘big city’, ‘new town’ and ‘old industrial city’ environments. The most interesting experiences were encountered with children in Stoke-on-Trent. Here, in former mineral workings functioning as ‘playgrounds’ equipped with relics from the heyday of the industrial revolution, in new open spaces reclaimed from industrial ‘wastelands’, and in older parks dating from Victorian times, children demonstrated the creative possibilities of a landscape of opportunities lacking in the other two sites. Even so, children in all three sites revealed great ingenuity in making do with whatever resources they could find to create viable play environments for themselves.

This comprehensive book explores theories and practice of play. It suggests that media influences have a profound effect on behaviour, and by stressing the importance of understanding play as a chart of development, and drawing links between home, school, clinics and therapy, he offers the prospect of an understanding of delinquency and difficulty.

A practical book for teachers consisting of 10 YC and TYC articles on the importance of integrating rich content-based, teacher-guided instruction with meaningful child-centered play to nurture children's emerging capabilities and skills.