The Early Years Movement Handbook

This timely book by Dr Manners provides an accessible text for early years practitioners and students about the crucial importance of physical movement for holistic development. With both theoretical perspectives and practice application, The Early Years Movement Handbook is essential reading.

Dr Lala Manners' latest book The Early Years Movement Handbook brilliantly connects the dots between physical play and learning. Movement is an essential requisite to early childhood development and an often missing critical element to the body and brain's formal learning preparation. Lala cleverly dissects important research and gives practical ideas of how adding movement to children's daily learning diet can enhance their learning experience. If ever there is a time for making a case for movement-based learning it is now when childhood as we know it is under threat.

This is an important and valuable book. Lala has a great ability to think deeply and holistically so as to expertly guide critical shifts in our thinking about the body and being physically active in early childhood. This provocative, challenging and highly readable text makes a compelling case for the centrality of movement in early childhood development, as the primary source of joy, health, resilience, learning and development. Through focusing upon clearly argued principles for movement-centred practice, it provides a fresh, logical and creative resource that demands a response from us all.

This book is a wonderful and timely reminder of the need to let go of our adult agendas and free children to follow their innate drive to move, explore, learn and simply enjoy themselves, each other and their world. Drawing on philosophy, science, child development theory and inspiring practical examples, Lala Manners shows us how to create the conditions in which young children can flourish through developing their physical confidence.

This book is hugely helpful in putting the wider discussion about physical development into a historical and pedagogical context. It confirms the importance of all teachers knowing more about why and how we offer children relevant and enjoyable experiences that builds their confidence to use their bodies to explore the changing world. The book is divided in two with part one establishing eight guiding principles that inform and support practice in physical development and the second half focusing on 'How do I do it?' The book avoids becoming a checklist because it is written in such a way as to enable you to drop in and out expanding learning on broad questions such as 'what is movement?' and more specific issues such as spatial reasoning. It will certainly be used as a key text at LEYF.

A much-needed resource at a time when childhood obesity has reached a crisis stage and children are more and more often treated as though they exist only from the neck up! Brava, Lala, for answering the question, "Why bother?"

A must-read book for any practitioner working in Early Years education.

In this book Dr. Manners has distilled a lifetime of observation and research into a very necessary, practical manual. Now, more than ever, we need tools based on sound foundations that can effect positive change for children. Dr. Manners is in the unique position of being able to combine physical and cognitive and developmental knowledge to help impact skill progression. A lifetime of experience is now made applicable through her research. This book allows practitioners the privilege of replicating results through an enjoyable, multi-layered appreciation of the value of each child's unique developmental journey.

If you work with young children and worry about their health and physical development, then this is the book for you. It's full of well-tried and practical approaches which put movement at the heart of the early years curriculum.