Book Synopsis

How can you create an effective play and learning environment for young children?
This practical and accessible book provides practitioners with a perfect tool-kit for observing and assessing children's play. It will help the early years teacher to acquire an enhanced understanding of the links between intellectual development, the growth of language and the emotional well-being of young children.

Pat Broadhead has developed the Social Play Continuum, a unique observation tool and a means of monitoring and developing a child's social progress through skills such as problem-solving, investigation and imaginative discourse. This tool forms an integral part of this innovative text, offering practitioners in a wide range of early years settings a method of focusing their observations of children's play. In addition, the book:

• illustrates links with the Foundation Stage Curriculum, Profiling and National Curriculum
• provides a research-based rationale and practical guidance
• acknowledges the many constraints that have operated on early years practitioners in the last decade.

Blending theory and practice in a fresh format, Early Years Play and Learning is aimed at all early years' practitioners concerned with quality provision for their pupils. It is also the ideal text to support student teachers and undergraduates on Early Childhood Studies degrees and classroom assistants.