This fully revised edition of Play for Children with Special Needs includes new research findings and explains their implications for practice.

This book will help practitioners to ensure that they are doing all they can to include children with special educational needs. The author looks at several conditions such as Asperger's Syndrome, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Down's Syndrome and ADD/ADHD and shows how play can be adapted to help alleviate the difficulties children with these additional needs might have. As more and more children with a higher level of special need come into mainstream schools, teachers, nursery nurses and teaching assistants have the responsibility of ensuring that they have access to all aspects of learning. This book offers guidance on what play is, how to adapt activities to suit children with special needs, how play can help recognition of children's progress, the most common types of special need, how play can be used to help raise self-esteem, and resources for further help. Written for those working in mainstream settings, the author shows how including children who have special needs in play can help to provide great opportunities for learning and for developing social and communication skills.

Introduction to the core concepts of teaching and supporting children with disabilities alongside their peers will help teachers ensure that all children meet their potential.

In this book practitioners will find clear and workable suggestions for opening up the Early Learning Goals to children with special educational needs. It will help them to use each work area of the early years setting as a means to teach the curriculum, and offers plenty of down-to-earth advice on activities to try with children who have additional needs. Following the curriculum guidance laid down for the Foundation Stage, the author provides ideas for managing specific types of disability within the mainstream setting. Play is the focus throughout the book as the means of helping children to learn. There are photocopiable activity sheets at the end of each chapter, together with a concise list of further reading. Useful resources and contact addresses are included.

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.