DOUBLE TAP TO ZOOM WITH PHONE OR TABLET How does this book help me support play and learning? This book helps you change your curriculum in several ways: • It provides instructions for activities that are full of learning and really fun. • It offers activity variations that will help keep the play going. • It suggests books and songs that expand on ideas and interests related to the activity. • It encourages the adult to reinterpret, reinvent, and reimagine our sugges- tions based on the interests of the children, the materials at hand, and his or her own imagination. • It helps the adult learn to relax, to let go, and to trust in play. How is this book structured? Each chapter outlines a play adventure with an overview, a list of ingredients, step-by-step instructions, a variety of variations, and related books and songs the adult can use to keep the play-based learning going. We’ve left some space at the end of each chapter to jot down notes about how the kids respond to the activity, to scribble new ideas, and to keep track of what preparation and facilitation techniques work best. Each chapter ends with suggestions for choosing your next play adventure. How should I use this book? We hope you will use this book as the foundation for an (un)curriculum, but how you do that depends on your needs: • You can ink activities from this book on your calendar for the next six months and then stick to our instructions when it comes time to play. • You can pull activities from this book when they connect to something the children are interested in. For example, if one week the kids are particular- ly into blocks, you might want to do the Peanut Butter Jar Blocks adventure you’ll find in chapter 7 (page 30). COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL xv