This book will be promoted via various NAEYC marketing efforts, including social media pages promotions (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest with a reach of over 200K followers); promotional emails; advertisements in Young Children, Teaching Young Children, and Exchange magazines; and NAEYC’s seasonal resource catalogs. Select authors of the publication will also present a webinar on a topic covered in the book soon after its publication. Finally, the publication will be advertised and sold at various early childhood conferences and trade shows (NAEYC’s Annual Conferences, NAEYC’s Professional Learning Institutes, Zero to Three, etc.).
Julia Luckenbill, MA, has a master's in education. She is the program coordinator for the infant and toddler components of the NAEYC-accredited Early Childhood Laboratory School at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) Center for Child and Family Studies. Julia has directed preschool programs in California and presents on child development topics for families, teachers, and students.
Aarti Subramaniam is a Research Specialist in the 4-H Center for Youth Development at the UC Davis. She studies youth program participation and youth well-being.
Janet Thompson, MA, is Director of Early Childhood Lab (ECL) School at the UC Davis Center for Child and Family Studies.
Early childhood educators wear many hats in the classroom: teacher,
guide, scheduler, caregiver, supervisor, and communicator, among
others. They also facilitate children’s play. Research has
demonstrated the power of play for fostering young children’s
development in a variety of areas, including mathematics, spatial
skills, language development, scientific thinking, and social
skills (Zosh et al., 2018). Authors Julia Luckenbill, program
coordinator at the Early Childhood Lab School at UC Davis, Aarti
Subramanian, research analyst for the University of California
Agriculture and Natural Resources’ 4-H program, and Janet Thompson,
director of the UC Davis Early Childhood Lab, bring significant
experience working with children and conducting research on early
childhood education. They understand the tension between the need
to fulfill many different classroom roles while at the same time
being intentional and evidenced-based in pedagogy and practice,
specifically regarding play in the classroom. That is why This Is
Play is a welcome addition to the current literature landscape for
early childhood educators. The goal of the book is to provide early
childhood educators with guidance for creating developmentally
appropriate methods for supporting children’s play and learning. In
pursuit of this goal, the book is well organized and easily
digestible for busy educators. The introductory chapter (Chapter
One) provides an overview of the importance of play and what it
means to foster children’s development in a playful context. The
authors also include a section on electronic toys and screen
devices. With the increasing prevalence of these devices in homes
and classrooms, contextualizing their presence with the reminder
that contingent adult-child interactions are the bedrock for
healthy development reminds educators to look for ways to either
avoid these devices or use them in ways that support learning and
development. The rest of the text is divided into chapters focusing
on young infants (0 to 9 months), mobile infants (8 to 18 months),
toddlers (16 to 36 months), and children with diverse
characteristics, abilities, and needs. Each of the age-based
chapters starts by giving a snapshot of children’s development
during that particular range, then gives practical examples and
tips for supporting children’s play. The authors also include
extensive lists of additional resources for teachers and families
in each chapter. In Chapter Two, focusing on 0- to 9-month-old
infants, the authors use vignettes to describe how to design safe
and supportive play environments for infants. For example, they
provide information about how materials connect to skills, such as
using stacking rings to support cognitive development. Chapter
Three (8- to 18-month-old infants) features additional vignettes
about play materials, including making homemade playdough. This
chapter also highlights the ways in which play fosters specific
skills, such as a pop-up toy helping children explore the concept
of cause-and-effect. In Chapter Four (16- to 36-month-old
children), the authors provide detailed information about designing
toddler play spaces to focus on a variety of play types, including
dramatic, nature, cognitive, gross motor, sensory, and block play.
They also encourage educators to choose play themes that are
meaningful for children, meaning that they connect to children’s
lives and previous experiences. Examples of these include a
doctor’s office and a grocery store, among others. Finally, Chapter
Five focuses on children with diverse characteristics, abilities,
and needs, and gives specific examples of how to work with children
and their families to ensure that all children, regardless of
disability status, language background, etc., have opportunities
for developmentally appropriate play. The strongest component of
the book is the authors’ commitment to demonstrating how play and
learning connect at various points in development. Research
suggests that humans learn best in active (not passive), engaged
(not distracted), meaningful (not disconnected), joyful, iterative
(not static), and socially interactive contexts (Zosh et al.,
2018). Play is well-situated to speak to all of these contexts.
This Is Play provides concrete examples in each chapter to help
early childhood educators create play opportunities that align with
these best practices. Another strength of the book is the authors’
focus on supporting play for all children regardless of disability
status, age, language background, medical needs, and other factors.
Using people-first language throughout highlights the authors’
commitment to seeing children first, before seeing their diagnoses.
The framing of the book by overlapping age groups also signals that
the authors understand that development does not follow a strict
timetable, but instead that there is a range of individual
differences. This Is Play also explicitly acknowledges the
financial challenges that early childhood educators face when
trying to plan play activities and spaces for their classrooms. The
authors provide strategies for saving money without sacrificing the
quality of the play experiences. Perhaps the one piece missing from
the book is the construct of playful learning. The authors define
play in Chapter One and then review several different types of
play; interpersonal, exploratory/sensorimotor, relational,
constructive, symbolic, and rough-and-tumble. However, much of the
play described in the book fits under the umbrella of playful
learning, including free play, which is both child-initiated and
child-directed; guided play, which combines the exploratory nature
of free play with developmentally appropriate scaffolding in
support of a learning goal; and games (Hassinger-Das et al., 2017).
Much of the play that the authors describe throughout the book
would be classified as guided play. Guided play can be an adult
simply setting up play materials in a pre-planned environment that
is designed to spark learning (Weisberg et al., 2016); for example,
a teacher reading a book about farms in class and then setting up a
play center with a farm play set featuring some of the children’s
newly learned vocabulary words. Guided play can also be an educator
joining in children’s play to support learning by asking questions
or scaffolding interactions (Weisberg et al., 2016). This Is Play
includes many examples and guidance highlighting the importance of
both adults as play partners and their scaffolding of learning
opportunities during play, which is very much in line with the
concept of guided play. Adding a discussion of playful learning,
and guided play in particular, would only serve to further connect
the book with the current literature. Overall, This Is Play is a
much-needed addition to the literature written for early childhood
educators. The book is easy to read, provides many concrete
examples, and is inclusive of the varied needs of children. Early
childhood educators have myriad daily responsibilities in the
classroom, but the authors provide clear guidance to help educators
create and support children’s play without adding too much more to
their plates. References Hassinger-Das, B., Toub, T. S., Zosh, J.
M., Michnick, J., Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2017). More
than just fun: A place for games in playful learning. Infancia y
Aprendizaje, 40, 191–281.
https://doi.org/10.1080/02103702.2017.1292684 Weisberg, D. S.,
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., Kittredge, A. K., & Klahr, D.
(2016). Guided play: Principles and practices. Current Directions
in Psychological Science, 25(3), 177–182.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0963721416645512 Zosh,
J. M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Hopkins, E. J., Jensen, H., Liu, C., Neale,
D.,… Whitebread, D. (2018). Accessing the inaccessible: Redefining
play as a spectrum. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1124.
10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01124
*Teachers College Record*
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