DOUBLE TAP TO ZOOM WITH PHONE OR TABLET Acknowledgments I have many people to thank for helping make this book possible. First, I want to thank my family for their support and encouragement. To my husband, thank you for supporting my efforts to give back to the field of early education. Your help in cooking meals, helping around the house, and printing photos allowed me the time I needed to create and write the activities in this book. To my daughters, Kim and Kat, thank you for your interest in and excitement about my writing. To my mother, brother, and sister, thank you for always being my greatest champions. Thanks to my friend Ingrid Anderson for your support on this book. A special thanks to Kimberly Bohannon for your creativity and willingness to contribute your songs and chants. Your sense of humor and playfulness has added to the joy of writing this book. To Shawn Thomas, thank you for your photography and creativity. It has been a plea- sure to capture the images of children from birth to age three with you. To the staff of the Orange Coast College Harry and Grace Steele Children’s Center and the Hatsue Daman Family Child Care Center, thank you for allowing me to pho­ to­graph your amazing early child care programs. To my friend Stacy Deeble-Reynolds, thank you for letting me take photographs in your home. And a special thanks to my friends and colleagues who let me photograph their beautiful children. I thank the editorial team at Redleaf Press, especially the work of Jeanne Engelmann and Kyra Ostendorf. Your ideas and direction provided focus to the book. To the cre- ative team at Redleaf Press, thank you for making the activities come to life through formatting and images. And to you, the reader of this book: You are important in the lives of very young children. You make a tremendous difference in their growth and development. As a responsive caregiver, you help children begin their lives in loving, caring, and nurturing environments. My goal in creating the activities in this book is to make them easy and fun to incorporate into your program. Infant and toddlerhood are amazing times of discovery and exploration. I hope you will enjoy expanding chil- dren’s learning through the playful activities in this book. COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL ix