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Book review Environments

Caring Spaces, Learning Places: Children\’s environments that work  by Jim Greenman Greenman devoted his life\’s work to studying, understand­ing, and constructing environments for young children. He published articles and smaller works over the years but this text is a crowning compendium of his findings and passion. Though as lengthy as a textbook, it reads conversationally. Components of

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Book Review 1024x307

Creativity book reviews

Nurturing creativity Rebecca Isbell and Sonia Akiko  Yoshizawa (20:1.6), National Association for the Education of Young Children ( NAEYC) The NAEYC offers us a well organised and, at a basic level, comprehensive account of creativity in young child\’s learning. The book is generously illustrated with photographs, diagrams and lists, and stories from nurseries. The chapters

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A Suitcase for Stories

A few years ago, I read “The Boy who Would Be a Helicopter” by Vivien Gussin Paley. This was her description of her work in Chicago around storytelling and story-acting. She describes how she worked with children to “scribe” their stories, recording them word-for-word as told by the children. The story was then acted out

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Balancing Beam

Case Study: Twos and Involvement

The responses of two-year-olds starting at nursery may be very different. The unfamiliarity of the setting will evoke a wide range of behaviours. Some, being overwhelmed, may simply ‘go into their shell’; some are distressed by the moment of separation from mums; others are attracted by everything in turn as it comes to their attention and they flit from one activity or centre

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