Everyday Playfulness

Everyday Playfulness
Author: Stuart Lester
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2019-12-19
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1784503266

Seeing play as an important and vital element of life for children and adults alike, this book addresses the ways in which practitioners take account of and act responsibly with moments of children's play and playfulness. Working with the Playwork Principles, the book draws on alternative concepts to traditional approaches, including ideas from materialist and posthuman philosophy and human geography, to explore playing as process rather than product. Topics covered include play and wellbeing, play and space, and the micro-politics of playing, critical cartography and adult account-ability and response-ability. It concludes by considering the implications for professional practice and offering ways that professionals can develop practices that maintain and co-create favourable conditions in which children's play can flourish.

Playful Design

Playful Design
Author: John Ferrara
Publisher: Rosenfeld Media
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2012-05-17
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1933820993

Game design is a sibling discipline to software and Web design, but they're siblings that grew up in different houses. They have much more in common than their perceived distinction typically suggests, and user experience practitioners can realize enormous benefit by exploiting the solutions that games have found to the real problems of design. This book will show you how.

Understanding Everyday Communicative Interactions

Understanding Everyday Communicative Interactions
Author: Julie A. Hengst
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2020-03-25
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000053644

Understanding Everyday Communicative Interactions is a unique text that uses a situated discourse analysis (SDA) framework to examine basic human communication and the interactions of those with communicative disorders in everyday and clinical settings. The book introduces SDA as a theoretical and empirical approach for examining the complexities of communicative interaction. It explores how people collaborate in everyday contexts to communicate successfully and how they learn to do so. From close analysis of a pretend game played by two children and their father to an observation of a man with aphasia and his family at a football match, the present volume offers rich portraits of communicative lives and illustrates the applications of SDA. The final part of the book uses SDA methods to demonstrate how clinicians can function as communication partners even during assessments and can design rich communicative environments for therapeutic interventions. In explaining the SDA framework and equipping readers with the tools to understand the nature of human communication, this sophisticated and engaging book will be an essential reference for students, researchers, and clinicians in communication sciences and disorders.

Why We Play

Why We Play
Author: Joanna Fortune
Publisher: Thread
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2022-09-14
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1803145153

Discover how to reconnect with the child in you and unlock the transformative power of play to live a more joyful life. Can you remember the utter delight of playing chase in the park, flying a kite in the summer breeze, or sinking your hands into a box of paints? As children, playing is how we make sense of the world and our place in it. Why then, as adults, do we forget how to play? Drawing on over twenty years of neuroscientific research, psychotherapist Joanna Fortune has discovered that play is the key to living a happier and more meaningful life. She shares the social, emotional, and physical health benefits of why it’s so good for us, including how to: - Practice micro moments of joy to boost positive mood - Embrace wonderment to help unlock creativity and problem solving - Find the fun in your everyday to alleviate stress - Use storytelling to heal from trauma and find emotional resilience - Nurture a holiday state of mind to rest your brain and recharge - Utilise simple techniques to repair and strengthen relationships From the first blissful sip of freshly brewed coffee to an immune-boosting good laugh with close friends, this ground-breaking book shows how play is rooted in our daily experiences. With helpful insights, tips, and exercises, you’ll discover the tiny changes that will revolutionise your life and why you’re never too old for play. Fans of Atomic Habits and Solve for Happy will love Why We Play. Read what everyone is saying about Why We Play: ‘Brilliant… joyful and transformative.’ Stefanie Preissner ‘I absolutely adore this book and it was a such a treat to read.’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘The author does a tremendous job at collating scientific data… I am amazed at the writing, it did not lag or lacked any substance. Amazing!’ NetGalley reviewer, 5 stars ‘I loved the mixture of scientific research and suggestions on how to play... a very accessible read and equally good to read through or just dip into the play suggestions… An excellent and important book that I'd recommend.’ NetGalley reviewer, 5 stars ‘An excellent reference guide to how we can introduce play and fun into every aspect of our lives, including the workplace where “a curious mind is a playful mind”. The exercises are terrific!’ NetGalley reviewer, 5 stars ‘What I like most about the book are the many exercises you can try to play, either alone or with another person. I really enjoy being silly so some of her exercises already belong to my daily routine. Seeing even more ideas was very inspiring for me… I would recommend this book to everyone who might feel stuck in the seriousness of life and is looking for more joy as part of their daily routine.’ Victoria’s Vlog ‘A necessary book for those aiming to improve their day-to-day lives through something as easy as PLAY!’ Goodreads Reviewer ‘A great book… highly recommend.’ Angelic Light Book Review ‘A great book… The activities are varied, extensive… a book I would 100% recommend to any adult who wants to enjoy life and live their best life.’ Goodreads reviewer

Play and Wellbeing

Play and Wellbeing
Author: Cindy Clark
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2017-10-02
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317309073

In an era of increasingly patient-centered healthcare, understanding how health and illness play out in social context is vital. This volume opens a unique window on the role of play in health and wellbeing in widely varied contexts, from the work of Patch Adams as a hospital clown, to an Australian facility for dementia treatment, to a New Zealand preschool after an earthquake, to a housing complex where Irish children play near home. Across these and other featured studies, play is shown to be shaman-like in its transformative dynamics, marshaling symbolic resources to re-align how patients construe and experience illness. Even when illness is not an issue, play promotes wellbeing by its power to reimagine, invigorate, enliven and renew through sensory engagement, physical activity, and symbolism. Play levels social barriers and increases flexible response, facilitating both shared social support and creative reassessment. This book challenges assumptions that play is inefficient and unproductive, with highly relevant evidence that playful processes actually work hard to dislodge unproductive approaches and thereby aid resilience. Solid research evidence in this book charts the course and opens the agenda for taking play seriously, for the sake of health. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Play.

Play Your Way Sane

Play Your Way Sane
Author: Clay Drinko
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2021-01-19
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1982169230

Stop negative thoughts, assuage anxiety, and live in the moment with these fun, easy games from improv expert Clay Drinko. If you’ve been feeling lost lately, you’re not alone! Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, Americans were experiencing record levels of loneliness and anxiety. And in our current political turmoil, it’s safe to say that people are looking for new tools to help them feel more present, positive, and in sync with the world. So what better way to get there than play? In Play Your Way Sane, Dr. Clay Drinko offers 120 low-key, accessible activities that draw on the popular principles of improv comedy to help you tackle your everyday stress and reconnect with the people around you. Divided into twelve fun sections, including “Killing Debbie Downer” and “Thou Shalt Not Be Judgy,” the games emphasize openness, reciprocation, and active listening as the keys to a mindful and satisfying life. Whether you’re looking to improve your personal relationships, find new meaning at work, or just survive our trying times, Play Your Way Sane offers serious self-help with a side of Second City sass.

Just Play

Just Play
Author: Miriam Beloglovsky
Publisher: Redleaf Press
Total Pages: 151
Release: 2023-07-18
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1605547786

Reclaim the joy of play for yourself! Play is crucial in adulthood because it fosters adaptiveness, creativity, role rehearsal, and mind-body integration. Just Play specifically targets adults' play and explains how the adults' shift toward creativity can influence children. If adults can reharness their playful capacities and reap all of play’s benefits, they will be equipped to work with children, design effective curricula, understand children and increase empathy, create playful leadership opportunities, and make significant changes to their programs and organizations. In play, children stay connected to their childhood capacities that support creativity and innovation. Just like children, when adults engage in play and creative endeavors, they can find that childlike center that cultivates happiness and joy. Play is affirming because it allows us to enter a natural, safe, and caring environment in which we freely explore our inner thinking and desires. The book will guide educators, administrators, and faculty through a series of comprehensive steps that will shift their thinking surrounding adult play. It is designed to give administrators, associations, and community agencies a blueprint to redesign programs to increase creativity and innovation, and ultimately drive system change.

Playfulness

Playfulness
Author: J. Nina Lieberman
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2014-05-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1483266273

Playfulness: Its Relationship to Imagination and Creativity focuses on a discussion of the play element in play. This book discusses the differentiation between play and exploratory behavior based on familiar versus novel aspects in the factual givens. Organized into seven chapters, this book begins with an overview of the role of play, imagination, and creativity in psychological research. This text then examines the theoretical model that indicates the role of playfulness in affective, cognitive, and social functioning, and particularly relates these links to creativity and imagination. Other chapters consider playfulness as behavior at later stages of development. This book discusses as well some of the variables considered in relation to playfulness, including sex differences, social class, and level of intelligence. This book is intended to be suitable for professionals and advanced students in a number of disciplines. Developmental and educational psychologists as well as educators will also find this book useful.

Baby Play for Every Day

Baby Play for Every Day
Author: DK
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2015-01-16
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1465439765

Hundreds of great ideas for making the most of time with your baby! Banish boredom and the blues, encourage your baby's development, and have fun being a parent. This irresistible ebook contains an inspiring idea for every single day of your baby's first year, with age-appropriate baby games and activities for babies from 0 to 12 months, plus great advice and creative ideas for moms and dads. Follow it day-by-day or dip in and out when the mood strikes you.

Playful Methods

Playful Methods
Author: Carmen Liliana Medina
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2022-05-11
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0429560729

This book introduces three new subjects to the context of literacy research—play, the imaginary, and improvisation—and proposes how to incorporate these important concepts into the field as research methods in order to engage people, materials, spaces, and imaginaries that are inherent in every research encounter. Grounded in cutting-edge theory, chapters are structured around lived narratives of research experiences, demonstrating key practices for unsettling and expanding the ways people interact, behave, and construct knowledge. Through an exploration of difference, play, and the imaginary, authors Medina, Perry, and Wohlwend present an active set of practices that acknowledges and attends to the global, fragmented, politicized contexts in literacy research. This book provides researchers and literacy education scholars with rich and clear theoretical foundations and practical tools to engage in literacy research in ethical, creative, and responsive ways. The authors invite readers to play by exploring the ways in which pedagogical, research, artistic, and other creative contexts can be sites to examine identity, plurality, and difference. Chapters feature innovative elements such as author dialogues that make visible how the authors engage with the ideas they present; guiding questions to prompt reflection and conversation; playful invitations to share possibilities of play in real-world contexts; and stories and practices to ground the conceptual and playful inquiry.