Playful Learning Library

21st Century Boys. Sue Palmer

21st Century Boys: How Modern life is driving them off the rails and how we can get them back on track.

Breaktime and the School: Understanding and Changing Playground Behaviour

Breaktime in the school is a period when pupils learn social skills they will need in the world outside. But it can also be an occasion for aggression, harassment and bullying. Breaktime and the School gives an accessible account of the latest research into children's play and behaviour.

Curriculum for Excellence through Outdoor Learning

Outdoor learning experiences are often remembered for a lifetime. Integrating learning and outdoor experiences, whether through play in the immediate grounds or adventures further afield, provides relevance and depth to the curriculum in ways that are difficult to achieve indoors.

Design for Play – a guide to creating successful play spaces

This guide from Play England is primarily for designers for children’s play areas.  This guide will also give communities and schools ideas on play spaces including risky play spaces; and water play spaces.

Developing Play for the Under 3s: The Treasure Basket and Heuristic Play.  Anita Hughes

The treasure basket and heuristic play approach is astoundingly simple; by offering natural and household objects to babies and toddlers you can make a profound impact on their learning capabilities, encouraging concentration, exploration and intellectual development.

Dirty Teaching: A Beginner’s Guide to Learning Outdoors.  Juliet Robertson

One of the keys to a happy and creative classroom is getting out of it and this book will give you the confidence to do just that. Drawing on academic research, Juliet explains why learning outdoors is so beneficial and provides plenty of tips and activities to help you integrate outdoor learning into your teaching practice, providing a broad range of engaging outdoor experiences for your students.

Evolutionary Playwork: Reflective Analytic Practice.  Bob Hughes

Play is a crucial component in the development of all children. In this fully updated and revised edition of his classic playwork text, Bob Hughes explores the complexities of children’s play, its meaning and purpose, and argues that adult-free play is essential for the psychological well-being of the child.

Forest School and outdoor learning in the early years. Sara Knight

Outoor learning continues to play an essential role in early years education, and this new edition of a bestselling book explores how the Forest School approach can be easily and effectively incorporated into early years practice.

Foundations of Playwork, Fraser Brown and Chris Taylor

This book provides a holistic overview of contemporary play and playwork. Straightforward and accessible, it covers topics such as playwork identity; play environments; the role of the playworker; values and ethics; play and playwork theory; and at the heart of the book, a special chapter located at the cutting-edge of 21st century play theory.

Gender, Sex and Children’s Play.  Jacky Kilvington and Ali Wood

Does gender, sex and sexuality influence children’s play, and their learning? Can/should professionals try to influence children’s gender and sexual concepts? Can/should professionals try to prevent gender stereotyping? These and other questions are explored in a lively and thought-provoking text that looks at why and how children inhabit or develop their gender and sexuality.

Lighting the fire

Lighting the fire stimulates thinking about how best we learn and particularly how best young children learn. It is well referenced and researched, revisiting the work of Froebel, tapping into evidence from home and overseas, and highlighting case study examples that bring theory to life.

Messy Maths: A playful, outdoor approach for early years. Juliet Robertson

In Messy Maths: A Playful, Outdoor Approach for Early Years, Juliet Robertson offers a rich resource of ideas that will inspire you to tap into the endless supply of patterns, textures, colours and quantities of the outdoors and deepen children’s understanding of maths through hands-on experience.

No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk-Averse Society.  Tim Gill

No Fear: Growing up in a risk averse society argues that childhood is being undermined by the growth of risk aversion. This restricts children’s play, limits their freedom of movement, corrodes their relationships with adults and constrains their exploration of physical, social and virtual worlds.

No Knives, Better Lives

This resource is designed to support preventative work around knife carrying with children aged 6+ and is part of a collection of resources to support the delivery of the Scottish Government’s No Knives, Better Lives (NKBL) initiative.

Noticing Nature Report

A growing body of evidence points to the positive impacts of nature for people. Yet, while evidence is growing rapidly, this is prompting new questions about the essential ingredients of a positive and sustainable relationship with nature for individuals.

Perspectives on Play: Learning for Life. Avril Brock

Perspectives on Play examines current research and theoretical knowledge with regards to play as a medium of learning. It examines the theory of play, relating cutting-edge research to case studies of practice, taken from a broad range of multi-disciplinary perspectives.

Play and Playwork: 101 Stories of Children Playing: 101 stories of children playing.  Fraser Brown

Children like to play. They get all sorts of benefits from playing. They get the most benefit from play when they are in control of what they are doing. Yet there are lots of circumstances today that mean children are not able to control their own play and that’s where playwork comes in, where the role of the playworker is to create environments that enable children to take control of their playing.

Playing Outdoors: Spaces and Places, Risk and Challenge. Helen Tovey

What do children learn through playing outdoors? What makes an effective and challenging play space? What is a safe environment and can children be too safe? How can adults best support challenging play outdoors?

Play Types: Speculations and Possibilities, Bob Hughes

Play Types – Speculations and Possibilities explains that ‘each play type is both distinctly and subtly different from the others. It is useful to be able to recognise them since engaging in each one is a necessary conrollary for a child’s healthy development.'

Playwork: Theory and Practice.  Fraser Brown

Children learn and develop through their play. In today’s world the opportunities for that to happen are increasingly restricted. The profession of playwork seeks to reintroduce such opportunities, and so enable children to achieve their full potential.

Practice-based research in children’s play. Wendy Russell, Stuart Lester and Hilary Smith

This unique collection puts forward a range of perspectives on children’s play and adults’ relationships with it. Based on 12 research projects carried out by experienced practitioners in the play sector in the UK and USA, it is essential reading for anyone studying or working with children at play.

Reclaiming Childhood: Freedom and Play in an Age of Fear. Helen Guldberg

A book that exposes the stark consequences on child development of both our low expectations of fellow human beings and our safety-obsessed culture.

Rethinking Children’s Play.  Fraser Brown and Michael Patte

Rethinking Children’s Play examines attitudes towards, and experiences of, children’s play. Fraser Brown and Michael Patte draw on a wide range of thought, research and practice from different fields and countries to debate, challenge and re-appraise long held beliefs, attitudes and ways of working and living with children in the play environment.

Risk and Adventure in Early Years Outdoor Play: Learning from Forest Schools. Sara Knight

Do you want to create exciting outdoor experiences for children? Are you looking for guidance on how to incorporate the wilder and riskier elements of outdoor play into your planning? This book will give you the confidence to offer children in your setting adventurous and challenging activities.

State of Children’s Rights report 2019

Together’s 2019 State of Children’s Rights in Scotland report sets out promising rights-based practice taken by Scotland’s public bodies.

The Dear Wild Place

Dear Wild Place, written by Emily Cutts and published through the Centre for Confidence and Well-being, tells the story of the Childrens Wood.  It contains a wealth of research to underpin our activities and is a great starting point for anyone considering setting up an initiative like this in their own area.

The Excellence of Play.  Janet Moyles

Play as a powerful learning and teaching experience remains key to effective early childhood education. Retaining its popular approach and style, this new edition reflects the contemporary context of early childhood education and care as well emerging research on young children’s development.

The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids.  Tom Hodgkinson

The Idle Parent is Tom Hodgkinson’s radical parenting remedy against stifled, mollycoddled children. Modern life is wrecking childhood. Why can’t we just leave our kids alone? If you’ve ever wondered why so many of today’s children are unhappy, spoilt, stressed and selfish, then the answers and the remedy are to be found in The Idle Parent. 

The importance of play

This report focuses on the value of children's play. It is a particularly important time for this to be recognised, as modern European societies face increasing challenges, including those that are economic, social and environmental.

The playtime revolution

Playtime Revolution is a free training resource for schools from Learning through Landscapes (previously Grounds for Learning) who want to improve their pupils experiences in the school playground.

The SAGE Handbook of Outdoor Play and Learning 

There has been a growing academic interest in the role of outdoor spaces for play in a child’s development. This text represents a coordinated and comprehensive volume of international research on this subject edited by members of the well-established European Early Childhood Education Research Association Outdoor Play and Learning SIG (OPAL).

The State of the World’s Children 2017: Children in a digital world

UNICEF set out to uncover how the internet and digital technology are helping and hindering children’s learning, well-being and social relationships.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: A Guide for Children & Young People

The UNCRC Booklet is aimed at children and young people under the age of eighteen and provides details of the rights they are entitled to under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The booklet gives details of each Article of the UNCRC and also provides key contact details for relevant organisations.

The Value of Play. Perry Else

This is an accessible coursebook for those specifically engaged in playwork and those on Childhood Studies programmes. Most recognise that play is good for children yet we are confused by the dangers we see in the wider environment and so often restrict children’s natural opportunities to play.

Toxic Childhood: How The Modern World Is Damaging Our Children And What We Can Do About It.  Sue Palmer

One in six children in the developed world is diagnosed as having ‘developmental or behavioural problems’ – this book explains why and shows what can be done about it.

UK Poverty 2017 JRF

UK Poverty 2017 highlights that overall, 14 million people live in poverty in the UK – over one in five of the population. This is made up of eight million working-age adults, four million children and 1.9 million pensioners. 8 million live in families where at least one person is in work. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation

We don’t play with guns here: War, Weapon and Superhero Play in the Early Years

War, weapon and superhero play has been banned in many early childhood settings for over 30 years. This book explores the development and application of a zero tolerance approach through the eyes of children and practitioners.