LibGuides: Early Education: Books & eBooks

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Contemporary Perspectives and Research on Early Childhood Education Contemporary Perspectives and Research on Early Childhood Education is a welcome addition to the field of early childhood education. This book enhances the understanding of different approaches to curriculum and instruction; appropriate assessment strategies; the role of math and science in children's development; the importance of seeing the whole child and ensuring children develop holistically through play and arts; training effective teachers; and the importance of helping parents to be better supporters of their children. Along with this comprehensive content, the book also contains diverse methodologies including qualitative, quantitative and mixed-method approaches, which will further enrich the reader's perspective and understanding of a wide range of topics in the field. Thus, this book creates a platform for researchers and practitioners to share and discuss research findings, expertise, and experiences about early childhood education.
Creative Resources for the Early Childhood Classroom Whether you're embarking on an exciting new career in early childhood or have been teaching your children for several years, this is the one resource you'll treasure. It is the most complete guide to planning a developmentally appropriate curriculum for young children. This text focuses on the growth of the whole child and includes hundreds of activities that make education interesting and challenging for young children. You'll get 67 themes with goals, concepts, vocabulary words, music, finger plays, experiences in mathematics, art, and cooking, resources and much more. An introduction helps teachers use the book more effectively, including discussion of how to use the thematic approach, suggestions for writing parent letters, and criteria for selecting children's books.
A Curriculum for the Pre-School Child: Learning to Learn First published in 1986, this book has been enormously influential in the training and professional development of early years workers. This new edition has been fully revised to take account of changes in the National Curriculum, the publication of the government's 'desirable outcomes' statement for the under-fives, and the introduction of NVQ's in child care and education. The new edition also includes sections on: the effects of developmental psychology on the early years curriculum; working with two-year-olds on self-awareness and social skills; developing communication, motor, analytical and problem solving skills; fostering aesthetic and creative awareness; play and the learning environment; record-keeping and assessment; involving parents; continuity from pre-schooling to statutory schooling.
Developing Language and Literacy with Young Children Developing Language & Literacy with Young Children, gives parents, teachers, and other professionals who work and play with young children a confident understanding of communication and language development for children from birth to age eight. This resource examines the range of elements that are typical of communication and language activities: thinking, feeling, imagining, talking, listening, drawing, writing, and reading. The author emphasizes the importance of children's relationships and communications with the people who care about them, spend time with them, and share in the excitement of their developing languages and their investigations of literacy. This guidebook covers: Early communication and language; Achievements of young bilinguals; Stories, narratives, and language play and their significance in literacy development; Emerging literacy in homes, early years settings and classrooms.
Educating and Caring for Very Young Children: The Infant/Toddler Curriculum With the number of infants and toddlers in group care increasing, this work aims to offer a timely contribution to early childhood learning practices. Expanding on the idea of curriculum as a dynamic, responsive experience rather than a rigid learning structure, the authors stress the need for education along with nurturing for very young children. They focus on play as the basis for curriculum and show how infant/toddler ""educarers"" can combine theory and practice taking into account both the physical and social environments. Through case descriptions of actual children, this volume discusses how to accommodate children with different development levels, backgrounds, personalities, and special needs. Finally, the authors explore ways to enhance curriculum quality.
Leadership in Early Education in Times of Change The collection brings together the latest work of researchers from Australia, Africa, Asia, and Europe focusing on early childhood leadership matters. It covers different aspects of leadership in early education: professional education and development, identity and leadership strategies as well as governance and leadership under different frame conditions.
Learning Across the Early Childhood Curriculum Education, according to John Dewey, should be viewed as dynamic and ongoing with direct teaching of integrated content knowledge. This volume offers readers an examination of the content areas in early childhood curriculum that honor Dewey's belief in active, integrated learning. When young children learn in a way that is most natural to them, they unconsciously integrate subject areas into a complex whole based on their current interests. The ability to apply and integrate academic skills such as language arts, numeracy, scientific investigation, social studies, technology, and health and physical education is key to building capacity for future learning. Teachers who follow this method of teaching view curriculum as a fully spun web that incorporates a number of subject matter components at one time, and ensure that the content areas are taught. Topics addressed in this volume include: The role of STEM, teacher preparation, communication and technology.
A Matter of Trust: Connecting Teachers and Learners in the Early Childhood Classroom Increasingly, teachers report that the young children who enter their classrooms are difficult to manage. This perception is supported by alarming statistics on the number of children growing up in difficult life circumstances. In this volume, the authors draw on their experiences as a developmental psychologist and as a teacher educator to provide ways for teachers to create positive child-teacher relationships and classroom climates.
Understanding Assessment and Evaluation in Early Childhood Education This bestselling book is still the best choice for helping early childhood teachers understand the process of assessment and evaluation to benefit young children. With the advent of the No Child Left Behind Act, testing, accountability, and standards are now pervasive throughout early childhood education. Completely revised to address the issues that have been raised by these new policies, the Second Edition features completely new chapters on: assessment of children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, addressing the new makeup of today's classroom; assessment of children with special needs, focusing on the relationship among assessment, curriculum, and instruction; and the addition of a helpful glossary of terms and an annotated listing of assessment instruments used in early childhood education.
Understanding How Young Children Learn: Bringing the Science of Child Development to the Classroom Human beings are born to learn. During the last few decades, developmental science has exploded with discoveries of how, specifically, learning happens. This provides us with an unprecedented window into children's minds: how and when they begin to think, perceive, understand, and apply knowledge. Wendy Ostroff builds on this research and shows you how to harness the power of the brain, the most powerful learning machine in the universe. She highlights the processes that inspire or propel learning--play, confidence, self-regulation, movement, mnemonic strategies, metacognition, articulation, and collaboration--and distills the research into a synthesis of the most important takeaway ideas that teachers will need as they design their curriculum and pedagogy. Each chapter has suggested activities for exactly how teachers can put theory into practice in the classroom. When you understand how your students learn, you will know how to teach them in ways that harness the brain's natural learning systems.

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Bringing Learning to Life Building on her enormously popular book, Bringing Reggio Emilia Home, Louise Cadwell helps American educators understand what it means to use ideas from the Reggio Approach in their classrooms. In new and dynamic ways, Cadwell once again takes readers inside the day-to-day practice of a group of early childhood educators. This time she describes the growth and evolution of the work in the St. Louis Reggio Collaborative over the past 10 years.
Early Education Curriculum: A Child's Connection to the World This comprehensive text presents developmentally appropriate early education curriculum for children from birth through 8 years old. Throughout the text, the emphasis is on addressing each child's individual needs, abilities, interests, and cultural diversity. Chapters include numerous pedagogical features, including an overview, guidance tips, guidelines for parental involvement, multicultural activities, afterviews, exploration assignments, and additional readings. The instructor's manual and test bank include guidelines for student observation and participation with children, chapter summaries, and competencies, topics for class discussions, student activity worksheets, and chapter tests.
A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool: Presenting the Evidence We are robbing young children of play time at home and school in an effort to give them a head start on academic skills like reading and mathematics. Yet the scientific evidence suggests that eliminating play from the lives of children is taking preschool education in the wrong direction. This brief but compelling book provides a strong counterargument to the rising tide of didactic instruction on preschool classrooms. The authors present scientific evidence in support of three points: 1) children need both unstructured free time and playful learning under the gentle guidance of adults to best prepare for entrance into formal school; 2) academic and social development are inextricably intertwined, so academic learning must not trump attention to social development; and 3) learning and play are not incompatible. Rather, playful learning captivates children's minds in ways that support better academic and social outcomes as well as strategies for lifelong learning. Written in clear and expressive language, this book offers a comprehensive review of research supporting playful learning along with succinct policy and practice recommendations that derive from this research. A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool is a must read for teachers, policy makers, and parents interested in educating a generation of life-long learners who are ready for school and ready to compete in the knowledge-based economy of the 21st century.