Art and Philosophy of Teaching Set

From high level approach to in the field integration, this collection of books gives you everything you need to understand and utilize the most up to date teaching methods for young children from experts in the field.

Save over 10% when you get these books together.

Art of Awareness, 3rd Edition

With new chapters and updates from early childhood leaders Deb Curtis and Margie Carter invite early childhood educators to learn the art and skill of observation.

The art of observing children is more than merely the act of watching them—it is also using what you see and hear to craft new opportunities in your classroom. This resource provides a wealth of inspiration and practice. It will help early childhood educators learn to observe in new ways, witness children's remarkable competencies as they experience childhood, and find new joy in their work with children.

The third edition updates include:

• New information on schema theory including a list of the definitions of schemas

• Updated stories that reflect schema explorations and focus on observing children's ability to get along

• Added information on identity development and the anti-bias goals

• New chapter on observing children using their bodies

• New QR codes to videos to continue learning

• Updates on technology and approaches to keeping observations at the center of required assessments

308 pages.

The Original Learning Approach

The Original Learning Approach is a new reflective practice inspired by Reggio Emilia that allows children to learn and play naturally and at their own pace and can be applied to any pedagogical method, philosophy, or context. The Original Learning Approach facilitates observation, imitation, learning, and practice through autonomous play. By incorporating wonder, curiosity, joy, knowledge, imagination, interaction, risk, time, reflection, and listening into teaching, this play-responsive lens will help early childhood professionals nurture continuous lifelong learners.

With questions, reflections, and stories of practice, The Original Learning Approach helps early childhood educators create a range of inclusive types of play and play experiences focused on interacting with materials, nature, the indoors, time, and the children themselves. Cultivate learning in your program that allows children to learn naturally and at their own pace.

200 pages

A Culture of Agency

How do educators create a strong culture of learning for their students? Using her everyday research approach, in the tradition of the pedagogistas of Reggio Emilia, author Lisa Burman observed several exceptional programs and classrooms and identified some common threads: engagement, agency, identity, and belonging, which together combine to create a culture of agency. Her framework for supporting a culture of agency has five pillars:

1. Relationships
2. Rituals for belonging and identity
3. Language of agency
4. Environment
5. Learning Contexts

Using this framework will help you bring intentionality as you build your program culture to support children’s agency and learning. The term agency is widely used, but often misunderstood as “giving children choice.” Agency is far more than this, and the most powerful learning happens when personal agency is connected to community agency: we are only as strong as each other. These connections form the heart of a democratic education: one that values the rights of the child and empowers participation, shared power, respect for diversity, and self-efficacy.

Softbound, 160 pgs

Honoring the Moment with Young Children

Join author Ron Grady in a joyous meditation on the meaning of childhood and a philosophical reflection on why children matter and why the way in which we share the moments of their lives matters. Deftly weaving anthropology, sociology, psychology, and theories of education, Honoring the Moment in Young Children’s Lives invites us to remake our image of the child and truly appreciate children for who they are at this time.

Honor the moments you spend with young children with a deeper understanding of their perspective and whole selves and use the unique position of educator to translate children’s moments, both ordinary and extraordinary, for their families and communities. Take the next step in observing and documenting young children and embrace the role of researcher, an ethnographer with unique and privileged proximity to children who takes a close-up look and uses that deep knowledge to advocate for children’s needs and their right to live their lives engaged in deep inquiry and self-directed, meaningful play.

Age Focus: 3–8. Softbound, 152 pgs.

Nurturing Brilliance

Acclaimed educator Sally Haughey distills decades of research and experience to advance our understanding of children’s play and learning so we can best nurture their innate brilliance. Sally’s illuminating Play-Activated Learning model gives educators and families an understanding of a child’s behavior in the classroom during free play, including the growth unfolding in the brain. It also offers a view of your role as the educator in supporting the child’s learning and development. Explaining the incredible unfolding and blossoming that happens during play, Nurturing Brilliance provides a science-based approach to communicating that growth and development to parents, while highlighting the expert you already are and providing you a way to bridge gaps in understanding so that all well-intended parties can support the ultimate goal—children’s growth and learning.

Age Focus: 3-8. Softbound. 144 Pages

Power in Pretend

Ranging from princess play to gun play, The Power in Pretend questions and sheds light on the ways children play with ideas of power. Children’s play often tells a story of power through the roles they choose to play: exercising power over, power with, or power for peers, adults, or phenomena from the wider world. Allowing and supporting these types of play, even when they may make adults uncomfortable, is key to fostering children’s identity and agency. The book gives practical strategies for adults in early childhood settings to support this sense of power in pretend play and in real ways. It draws on an updated understanding of gender expression, as well as a nuanced approach to consent, and includes a contemporary understanding of the development of executive function skills and their impact on young children’s behaviors. The book also considers cultural influences on children’s play and adults’ reactions, as well as how peer interactions and play may be affected by differences among children.

Age Focus: 3-6. Softbound. 152 pages.

A Way of Seeing

In this book, author Ron Grady invites teachers to reflect on their own practice as educators using what is one of the most accessible but perhaps least deeply considered practices of documentation: photography. Photography is an accessible and powerful tool for reflection and documentation, and children’s day-to-day experiences in settings of care and education deserve to be captured with intense attention.

The book is arranged as a series of artistic workshops that invites early childhood educators through a course in photography, considering its practice, its documentational potential, its aesthetic and logistical challenges, and its creative possibilities.

Age Focus: 0-8. Softbound, 216 pgs.