Teachers often see repetitive behaviors in toddler and preschool classrooms, such as building and knocking down block towers or dumping out toys. When children do these actions over and over it can be irritating to teachers and parents, but viewing these actions through the lens of schema theory, developed by Jean Piaget, can help understand what’s really going on in children’s brains when they display these repetitive behaviors. Children’s Lively Minds is filled with stories about real children exploring schema, followed by reflection and questions about what children might be learning. Schema theory in your work with young children whether you know it or not. Understanding it, putting intention behind it, can help families and teachers ease frustration with young children’s repetitive behavior and allow adults to better support brain development.

Provides early childhood teachers a framework for collaborating with children to create a dynamic, emergent curriculum.

What are schemas and why do they matter? Again! Again! provides an introduction to understanding and supporting schemas and schema play in young children. Practitioners will find an overview of schemas with guidance on where they fit within the EYFS. There are examples of schemas, with illustrations and descriptions of common behaviour patterns, and these are set within the general context of child development. The intention is to help early years practitioners identify schemas and to understand both how important they are and the vital role they play in the growing child's learning. The aim is to help the reader understand how they can develop, plan and resource activities which support children's learning through experiment and play.

Three-year old Emily greets her grandfather at the front door: "We're having a surprise party for your birthday! And it's a secret!" We may smile at incidents like these, but they illustrate the beginning of an important transition in children's lives--their development of a "theory of mind." Emily certainly has some sense of her grandfather's feelings, but she clearly doesn't understand much about what he knows, and surprises--like secrets, tricks, and ties all depend on understanding and manipulating what others think and know. Jean Piaget investigated children's discovery of the mind in the 1920s and concluded that they had little understanding before the age of six. But over the last twenty years, researchers have begun to challenge his methods and revise his conclusions. In The Child's Discovery of the Mind, Janet Astington surveys this lively area of research in developmental psychology. Sometime between the ages of two and five, children begin to have insights into their own mental life and those of others. They begin to understand mental representation--that there is a difference between thoughts in the mind and things in the world, between thinking about eating a cookie and eating a cookie. This breakthrough reflects their emerging capacity to infer other people's thoughts, wants, feelings, and perceptions from words and actions. They come to understand why people act the way they do and can predict how they will act in the future, so that by the age of five, they are knowing participants in social interaction. Astington highlights how crucial children's discovery of the mind is in their social and intellectual development by including a chapter on autistic children, who fail to make this breakthrough. "Mind" is a cultural construct that children discover as they acquire the language and social practices of their culture, enabling them to make sense of the world. Astington provides a valuable overview of current research and of the consequences of this discovery for intellectual and social development.

How and when does a child begin to make sense of the world? Why does a lively preschool child so often become a semiliterate and defeated school failure?

This festive parody reimagines a classic bedtime book as a lively Jewish family gathering complete with bubbies and zeydes—a perfect gift or read aloud that includes an exclusive latke recipe by Ina Garten, TV’s Barefoot Contessa! In the small blue room there was a bubbala, and a little shmatta, and then—oy vey!—came the whole mishpacha! This zesty parody of one of America's favorite picture books offers a very different bedtime routine: one that is full of family exuberance and love. Instead of whispers of “hush,” this bedtime includes dancing and kvelling, and of course, noshing—because this little bunny is a Jewish bunny, and this joyous book celebrates the Jewish values of cherishing your loved ones, expressing gratitude, and being generous. Filled with Yiddish words, the book includes a phonetic glossary and even an easy latke recipe by beloved cookbook author Ina Garten, who calls the book “brilliant, beautiful, important, and so much fun!”