By Amy Noelle Parks

Copublished with Teachers College Press

This practical book provides preservice and in-service teachers with an understanding of how math can be learned through play. The author helps teachers to recognize the mathematical learning that occurs during play, to develop strategies for mathematizing that play, and to design formal lessons that make connections between mathematics and play. Common Core State Standards are addressed throughout the text to demonstrate the ways in which play is critical to standards-based mathematics teaching and to help teachers become more familiar with these standards. Classroom examples illustrate that, unlike most formal tasks, play offers children opportunities to solve non-routine problems and to demonstrate a variety of mathematical ways of thinking—such as perseverance and attention to precision. This book will help put play back into the early childhood classroom where it belongs. The book joins TCP’s Early Childhood Education Series (Language and Literacy).