Follow a child for a day and you will see a lot of play. Or is it? Schlat's book reveals how a child's play is really a child's work, and how they learn. A lovely romp through the everyday learning activities of a child!

Presley 'Elvis' Carlton was at the top of his game. Number one draft pick, engaged to an up-and-coming model, and voted best player of the decade his first year on the field. Things were golden. . . until an accident saw everything important torn from his grasp. He's determined to get his life back, though, and with a strict regime, and no time for a life outside of the game, the last thing he wants is the attention of a curvy college student whose only motto in life is to not take it too seriously. Can an Australian expat show the struggling sports star there's more to life than the next win? Or has Willow Underwood chewed off a chunk of man-meat too thick for her to swallow? Just Playin' is a standalone sports romance RomCom that will give you all the feels. It has sexy scenes and several laugh-out-loud moments. This is not tied to any of my other books, and can be enjoyed by itself. AKA: No cliffhangers! * For TWs please visit the author's website.

Just Playing explores why we should encourage, promote, value and initiate play in our classrooms, and why teachers should be part of it. Janet Moyles draws on research findings from several countries which provide further evidence for establishing the value of play. She focuses on children between 4 and 8, examining the principles of play in early childhood education, and indicates how these principles can be put into practice. She provides a full justification for including play in the early years curriculum and encourages teachers, through examples of children at play, to review their own thinking on the issues in the light of core curriculum pressures.This is essential reading for trainee and practising nursery and primary teachers and nursery nurses; and for all those concerned with the education and development of young children.

Forget the 10,000 hour rule— what if it’s possible to learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or less? Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn to do. What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare? Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of prac­ticing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . . In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct com­plex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By complet­ing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. Kaufman personally field-tested the meth­ods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard key­board, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the sim­ple techniques he teaches: Define your target performance level: Fig­ure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better. Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcompo­nents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first. Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice. Create fast feedback loops: Getting accu­rate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve. Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chain­saws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK Tired, stressed, and in need of more help from your partner? Imagine running your household (and life!) in a new way... It started with the Sh*t I Do List. Tired of being the “shefault” parent responsible for all aspects of her busy household, Eve Rodsky counted up all the unpaid, invisible work she was doing for her family—and then sent that list to her husband, asking for things to change. His response was...underwhelming. Rodsky realized that simply identifying the issue of unequal labor on the home front wasn't enough: She needed a solution to this universal problem. Her sanity, identity, career, and marriage depended on it. The result is Fair Play: a time- and anxiety-saving system that offers couples a completely new way to divvy up domestic responsibilities. Rodsky interviewed more than five hundred men and women from all walks of life to figure out what the invisible work in a family actually entails and how to get it all done efficiently. With 4 easy-to-follow rules, 100 household tasks, and a series of conversation starters for you and your partner, Fair Play helps you prioritize what's important to your family and who should take the lead on every chore, from laundry to homework to dinner. “Winning” this game means rebalancing your home life, reigniting your relationship with your significant other, and reclaiming your Unicorn Space—the time to develop the skills and passions that keep you interested and interesting. Stop drowning in to-dos and lose some of that invisible workload that's pulling you down. Are you ready to try Fair Play? Let's deal you in.

In this fast-moving, gritty debut novel, one woman learns that even the strictest rules are made to be broken... At thirty-seven, Tuesday is eager for a better way of life. That means getting out of the game her gentleman’s club has been fronting. Her all-female “business” team has made a fortune using the club to attract, seduce—and rob—wealthy men. But in addition to being squeezed by a corrupt cop, an unfortunate incident has put Tuesday deep in debt to a ruthless gun dealer and is creating dangerous dissent behind-the-scenes... Tuesday only sees one option. She’ll have to go undercover playing girlfriend to legendary Detroit crime boss Sebastian Caine. But the risky move just might cause her to break her #1 rule: don’t catch feelings. Because things are not what they seem—and neither is Sebastian. Now Tuesday may have to choose between the future she’s always wanted, the team she swore loyalty to, and the money she desperately needs to save her own life...

“This book provides a theoretical and empirical foundation for the development of new and exciting pedagogical approaches to the teaching and learning of digital literacies in the earliest years of schooling... researchers, educators, and policymakers alike ignore its key messages at their peril in the decades ahead.” —From the Foreword byJackie Marsh, the University of Sheffield, UK “Play, too often in the past, has been seen as a four-letter word by those who wish to raise academic standards. Wohlwend shows why this position is untenable and why play is a curricular necessity in kindergarten and beyond. This is a must read for anyone worried about what parents and administrators will say about the infusion of play in their curriculum.” —Jerome C. Harste, Indiana University, Bloomington Karen Wohlwend provides a new framework for rethinking the boundaries between literacy and play, so that play itself is viewed as a literacy practice along with reading, writing, and design. Through a variety of theoretical lenses, the author presents a portrait of literacy play that connects three play groups: the girls and, importantly, boys, who played with Disney Princess media; “Just Guys” who used design and sports media to make a boys-only space; and a group of children who played teacher with big books and other school texts. These young children "play by design"—using play as a literacy to transform the texts that they read, write, and draw—but also as a tactic to transform their relational identities in the social spaces of peer and school cultures. Emphasizing the importance of play despite current high-stakes testing demands, this book: Provides an argument for re-centering play in early childhood curricula where play functions as a literacy in its own right. Offers cutting-edge analyses and examples of new literacies, popular culture, and multimodal discourses. Illustrates how children’s play can both produce and challenge normative discourses regarding ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Examines the multimodal, multimedia textual practices of young children as they play across tensions among popular media, peer relationships, and school literacy. Features vivid descriptions, examples of young children in action, and photographs. Karen E. Wohlwendis an assistant professor in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education at Indiana University. The research in this book was awarded the 2008 International Reading Association Outstanding Dissertation Award.

The Voice of the Blues brings together interviews with many pioneering blues men including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Jimmy Reed, B.B. King, and many others.

A jazz writer for three decades, W. Royal Stokes has a special talent for capturing the initial spark that launches a musician's career. In Growing Up With Jazz , he has interviewed twenty-four instrumentalists and singers who talk candidly about the early influences that started them on the road to jazz and where that road has taken them. Stokes offers a kaleidoscopic look at the jazz scene, featuring musicians from a dazzling array of backgrounds. Ray Gelato recalls the life of a working class youth in London, Patrizia Scascitelli recounts being a child prodigy in Rome who became the first woman of Italian jazz, and Billy Taylor tells about his childhood in Washington, DC, where his grandfather was a Baptist minister and his father a dentist--and everyone in the family seemed well trained in music. Perhaps most exotic is Luluk Purwanto, an Indonesian violinist who as a child listened to gamelan music in the morning and took violin lessons in the afternoon (on an instrument so expensive she didn't dare quit). For some, the flame burned bright at an early age. Jane Monheit sang before she could speak and was set on a musical career by age eight. Lisa Sokolov played classical piano, sang opera and choral music, and was in a jazz band--all by high school. But Carol Sudhalter, though born into a very musical family ("a Bix Beiderbecke family"), was a botany major at Smith, and only became a serious musician after college, quitting a government job to study the flute and saxophone in Italy. From Art Blakey to Claire Daly to Don Byron, here are the compelling stories of two dozen top musicians finding their way in the world of jazz.

Focusing on the transformative power of the creative arts process, Christopher Worthman offers readers a new way of thinking about literacy development and, specifically, the teaching of writing and out-of-school literacies. Rich with theoretical and practical insights, this groundbreaking ethnography describes and analyzes the writing development of a group of teenagers involved in a unique community-based teen theater project. Includes detailed descriptions of improvisational activities that can be adapted for use by other classes or ensembles.