Children′s Play
About this ebook
"Wonderful edition to a foundations course; much needed focus on the natural way children learn through play!"
—Diane Lang, Manhattanville College
"This is the most clearly self aware of the several current works in the psychology of children′s play. It has the unique worth of being unusually comprehensive with respect to play stages, gender differences, private lives, neighborhoods, humor, collections, video games, responses to stress and the uses of recess and play therapy. I particularly liked the demonstration of the continuing role of make believe from early childhood on into the theatric, literary, and electronic foci of adolescence. These four authors are to be congratulated for having brought us as students and as parents an unusually readable text."
-Brian Sutton-Smith, Prof. Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania
"The authors′ treatment of play is both original and provocative. Unlike most previous expositions on play, they consider not only the social and cognitive dimensions of play but also its aesthetic nature. The treatment of youth sport was especially impressive. This is a ′must read′ for students of play."
-Anthony D. Pellegrini, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
"Children′s Play combines uncompromising scholarship with fresh, joyful prose. By looking at both the structure and content of play the authors help us understand the developmental significance of this complex way of being in the world. Each chapter contains exactly the topics we want to study and adds surprises that counter the folk-psychology of today. Children′s Play does more than overview the research literature; it engenders new thinking."
-George E. Forman, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Play is a fundamental value for children-it is complex, beautiful, and important for children′s development. Play is about having fun, being outdoors, being with friends, choosing freely, pretending, enacting fantasy, and playing games. It is about enjoying the moment, and consequently, not about planning for or worrying about the future.
Play is a surprisingly complex and significant phenomenon in the lives of children everywhere. Children′s Play looks at the many facets of play and how it develops from infancy through late childhood. Authors W. George Scarlett, Sophie Naudeau, Dorothy Salonius-Pasternak, and Iris Ponte take a broad approach to examining how children play by including a wide variety of types of play, play settings, and play media. The book also discusses major revolutions in the way today′s children play, including changes in organized youth sports, children′s humor, and electronic play. Children′s Play addresses diversity throughout the text and explores play on the topics of gender, disabilities, socioeconomic class, and culture.
Key Features
- Examines how play is used for purposes other than leisure, including academic learning and reducing stress in environments such as hospitals and refugee camps
- Integrates culture throughout to give readers a true understanding of how culture shapes children′s play
- Provides rich illustration of figures and photos to portray children in various play settings
- Includes pedagogical aids such as chapter-opening outlines, boxed material to highlight key points, real-life examples, and a summary section with key words, names, and ideas for working with children
Children′s Play is an excellent textbook for advanced undergraduate courses on child behavior in the areas of Psychology, Human Development and Family Studies, Education, Early Childhood Education, and Educational Psychology. It is also a useful resource for professionals already working with children including preschool, elementary, and junior high school teachers, daycare workers, and related fields.
is an excellent textbook for advanced undergraduate courses on child behavior in the areas of Psychology, Human Development and Family Studies, Education, Early Childhood Education, and Educational Psychology. It is also a useful resource for professionals already working with children including preschool, elementary, and junior high school teachers, daycare workers, and related fields.Ratings and reviews
About the author
W. George Scarlett is senior lecturer and deputy chair of the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University. He received a BA from Yale University, an MDiv from the Episcopal Divinity School, and a PhD (in developmental psychology) from Clark University. He has authored or co-authored six books and co-edited the Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development (published by SAGE). His second most recent book was Approaches to Behavior and Classroom Management (also published by SAGE). He has been the lead author or co-author of chapters in The Handbook of Child Psychology and The Handbook of Life-Span Development – both leading resources for professionals conducting research on children and adolescents. In addition, he has published numerous articles on a variety of subjects pertaining to children, including articles on behavior management, and he has been on the research teams of several internationally known leaders, including Ed Zigler at Yale (early research on Head Start) and Howard Gardner at Harvard (early research on multiple intelligences). He has served as a consultant to the Cambridge, Somerville, and Lowell Head Start systems in Massachusetts and directed a residential summer camp for children with emotional and behavioural disorders. Currently, he is a regular consultant to reporters and news agencies, communicating to the general public best practices for raising and educating children and youth. At Tufts, in addition to his administrative duties as the department’s deputy chair, he teaches courses on approaches to problem behavior, children’s play, and spiritual development, and writes a column, “Kids These Days,” for Tufts Magazine.
Sophie Naudeau is a graduate of Sorbonne University and a former Fulbright fellow. She has extensive fieldwork experience with refugee children in diverse cultures (Bosnia; Guinea-Conakry; Sierra Leone; Thailand and Cambodia) and currently writes and conducts research on resilience and children’s play among war-affected children and children of prisoners.
Dorothy Salonius-Pasternak is a graduate of Wesleyan University and was formerly affiliated with the National Research Institute in Finland and the Yale New Haven Hospital. Currently, she conducts research on adolescents with diabetes through the Harvard Medical School, Joslin Diabetes Clinic and Tufts University.
Iris Ponte is a graduate of Holy Cross College and a former Watson Scholar. She has conducted extensive research in preschools in the United Kingdom, Taiwan, China, Japan and Newfoundland and has worked for Sesame Street Research at the Children’s Television Workshop in New York.
