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!

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.

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.

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.

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.