By highlighting the learning potential within different play activities, this book shows how play can complement and enhance the social, emotional, perceptual motor and intellectual development of children in their early years.

Each of these aspects are explored in depth, so that early years practitioners may understand why children behave as they do at different ages and stages in their development. Understanding children in their own context underlies decisions for intervention or non-intervention in their play, and this text shows how this can be done sensitively and in a manner which supports and extends their learning. Related issues of immense importance to children and their carers are discussed, such as, the development of emotional intelligence, gender bias and making friends, suggestions to help children who find play difficult.

This book should be of interest to early years teachers, nursery nurses, classroom assistants and parents.