Shop by Brand: Gryphon House

With 52 weeks of fantastic art projects using easy-to-find, everyday materials, Art with Anything provides a year of creativity, imagination, and fun for children ages 4-10!

Organized alphabetically by material, each week features one everyday material (address labels, fabric scraps, leaves, rocks) and provides five days of unique activities, increasing in complexity with each day. Art with Anything uses materials like buttons, cardboard, hole-punch dots, junk mail, masking tape, sandpaper, and salt, which encourages recycling and reusing!

Children will love making "Glitter Photo Jars" or working on "Shake-It-Up-Bag Paintings," and projects like "Family Finger Puppets" and "Fluff-N-Puff Mobiles" will keep them entertained for hours and stretch their imaginations.

Whether at home or at school, in child care or an after-school program, exploring the process of creating art is one of the most compelling ways children learn, and Art with Anything keeps children learning creatively all year long!

Children are expected to read, write, count, and sit still at younger and younger ages. As these unrealistic expectations mount, family members and teachers alike continue to believe that these activities will prepare young children for school. But there is a better way—one that helps children build school readiness through developmentally appropriate activities. Best of all? The children can have fun!

Building on Emergent Curriculum guides preschool teachers to tap into young children's natural inclination for play to build their skills, promote their development, and, ultimately, prepare them for elementary school. Learn:

• Why traditional theme-based units don't work
• What school readiness really looks like
• Wow to recognize and capitalize on the many teachable moments that arise during play
• Ways to train teachers and involve families in emergent curriculum

Play and learning aren't mutually exclusive. Building on Emergent Curriculum will help readers give preschoolers a solid foundation for elementary school while they do what children do best: play!

While the visual and performing arts are powerful curricular companions to early STEM experiences, educators may not have the tools and resources to introduce art beyond painting and drawing. Creative Investigations in Early Art provides them with an inquisitive, explorative approach to boost young learners' creativity and critical-thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills through artistic expression.

Each chapter provides educators with practical ideas for intentionally fostering young children's hands-on, minds-on explorations connecting the following areas of the creative arts to STEM:
• Music and Movement
• Dramatic Arts
• Visual Arts
• Artists and Artworks

Early childhood teachers continue to seek activities that promote STEM-based learning. But most STEM books focus on science and math, excluding technology and engineering. Creative Investigations in Early Engineering and Technology helps teachers create a more well-rounded STEM learning program.

• Encourage children to think, make, tinker and innovate
• Introduce engineering skills such as coding in a developmentally appropriate way
• Leverage children's use of digital technologies to help them learn new skills
• Promote active engagement and participation in classroom learning

Young children are born scientists with an innate desire to analyze and investigate the world around them. Creative Investigations in Early Science helps educators expand and encourage young learners' inquisitive nature as they explore the physical, life, and earth sciences.

Each chapter provides educators practical and approachable ways to intentionally foster young scientists' hands-on, minds-on explorations in the following areas:
• Matter and physical properties
• Physical and chemical changes
• Conservation and sustainability
• Earth and space systems

Infants and toddlers need caring adults to help them learn emotional competence—how to understand, express, and manage emotions. By supporting their development in the early years, educators can create a strong foundation that will give young children important life skills and resilience.

The authors of the acclaimed book From Biting to Hugging: Understanding Social Development in Infants and Toddlers bring educators another go-to infant and toddler resource in Crying and Laughing: The Emotional Development of Infants and Toddlers. Learn crucial skills for creating a safe and nurturing environment for infants and toddlers in your care.

• Understand how young children's emotions develop
• Create responsive and nurturing teacher-child interactions
• Help children manage strong emotions
• Reduce children's emotional stress
• Foster family engagement
• Care for yourself

Research has shown that preschool expulsion is not only harmful to young children, but young boys of color are more likely to be suspended or expelled than other children.

Challenging behaviors can derail an early childhood classroom, and punishment and exclusion aren't the answer. Young children need support and instruction to help them learn how to cooperate, listen, share, interact positively with their peers and with adults. Where to start? Effective Discipline Policies will be your go-to resource.

• Craft a developmentally appropriate, consistent, effective behavioral guidance policy
• Create a system that supports young children's social-emotional competence
• Provide a healthy environment in which young children can learn and grow
• Improve the quality of teacher-child interactions

Babies are naturally active, and their movements help them explore their environment. They first move involuntarily, based on reflexes, and then learn to move more independently as their bodies grow stronger and they begin to investigate the world around them.

You can encourage their muscle development, strength and balance with simple activities done with infants as young as six weeks old.

From tummy time to crawling, scooting and standing, your active involvement will benefit infants in the following ways:
• Maintaining a healthy weight
• Developing good posture, strength, balance, and tracking skills
• Keeping their bodies active and learning about their new environment
• Developing their senses of hearing, sight, and touch

The first year of life lays the foundation for further development of gross motor skills as a toddler and preschooler. So get those little bodies moving!

Toddlers are on the move almost constantly! Even though encouraging physical activity is not a problem, you can model new movements and skills and lay the foundation for them to enjoy physical activity as they grow.

Toddlers need lots of time to master the basics, such as jumping, rolling, and balancing. As they become more comfortable with their bodies and confident in their ability to be physically active, their desire to participate will increase. They'll enjoy kicking and throwing different types of balls, walking up and down stairs, running outside, and pedaling tricycles.

Most of their physical activity involves unstructured play, and rightly so. However, you can also introduce them to new equipment with structured play and then let them explore on their own or with playmates.

If you help toddlers understand how to develop physical skills, you will help them build confidence and have fun being active. What a gift for a lifetime!

Child-care environments play an important role in how babies, toddlers, and two-year olds experience learning. Colors, sounds, smells, and the placement of furniture, lighting, and textures all influence how people act and interact inside a classroom. Chock-full of colorful photographs from real-world infant and toddler settings, this book offers fresh ideas for making centers and classrooms inspiring for all of the people who inhabit them. Discover numerous, easy-to-implement strategies to create a well-planned, enticing environment with a thoughtfully implemented curriculum to profoundly influence cognitive development, emotional development and mental health, physical development, social skills and language development, guidance approaches, and caregiver satisfaction.

With the increase in both parents working outside the home during the last two decades, infants and toddlers are spending more time together in infant/toddler programs and family child-care homes. From Biting to Hugging will give you effective strategies to help you take advantage of this peer time.

• Enhance the quality of peer experiences in infant/toddler group settings
• Create responsive adult-child relationships and environments
• Encourage positive social emotional development and learning
• Teach infants and toddlers how to be in healthy, enjoyable relationships
• Learn strategies for gently handling challenging behaviors

Parents and caregivers often seek ways to stimulate their little learners, but don't know where to start. While many conveniences have come our way in the digital age, none has made the process of guiding children through their years of growth and development any quicker, easier or less complex.

Fun Baby Learning Games brings a new approach to having fun and learning.

• Incorporate theory and research-backed activities in a fun and engaging way
• Help your infant or toddler nurture his/her skills and reach emerging milestones
• Foster development in one or more of the five areas of development – cognitive, motor, social/emotional, language, and self-esteem

An ideal way to start children on an exciting, creative adventure towards global understanding! The fun, easy-to-do art activities in Global Art use collage, painting, drawing, printing, construction and sculpture to help children appreciate people and cultures from all over the world. Each activity is explained in step-by-step detail an accompanied by geographic and cultural background to help you make the most of the teaching possibilities.

Communities of practice are an age-old phenomenon representing teamwork. Whether it's researchers developing treatments for a disease or educators sharing best practices to enhance early childhood learning, communities of practice are about connection and shared purpose.

Growing Together will help you define, create, and promote a community of practice to foster collaborative problem solving and enhance professional learning experiences.

You will learn key strategies and techniques to help you:
• Develop a shared vision and structure
• Leverage tools to invite members and build a community
• Build member engagement and investment
• Master facilitation and evaluation strategies for ongoing professional learning

Sometimes misbehavior isn't what it seems. Many children come to care with early signs of mental- or behavioral-health issues. Early childhood professionals are often the first to notice that something is different.

How Can I Help? is a practical guide that helps educators first identify issues and then create nurturing, safe, and successful learning environments to set up all children for success.

Learn how to:
• Promote mental health for all children in your care
• Identify signs of behavioral-health issues in children and family members
• Support children who have specific behavioral-health difficulties
• Work with the families of children with behavioral-health challenges

While most activity books encourage indoor explorations, countless adventures and learning opportunities await outside! Going for a walk or exploring the local community can bring about much more than just exercise.

Little Walks, Big Adventures helps you teach your toddler about his/her surroundings through fun and adventurous local explorations, outdoor games and activities that promote and enhance learning. Parents and caregivers will help their toddlers enhance their:

• Vocabulary
• Language skills
• Cognitive skills
• Motor Skills
• And more!

Children are spending less time being outside in nature, playing, imagining, and learning about their surroundings. Instead, they're spending more time with tablets, televisions, and overly structured routines. Preschool Beyond Walls shows practical and strategic ways educators can create rich, explorative, and interdisciplinary learning through extensive outdoor experiences.

Learn how to develop and implement a nature-based curriculum to support children's optimal learning, from start to finish. Whether you're creating a new curriculum or transitioning from a traditional approach, you will learn how to:

• Create a program philosophy
• Infuse nature into all aspects of your program
• Prepare teachers for a nature-centered approach
• Implement curriculum and pedagogy that emphasize inquiry-based learning through play and hands-on discovery
• Maintain high-quality early childhood practices that support children's development

Resource books often provide tips and tricks for managing challenging behaviors, but what happens when those tactics don't work? Most teachers give up. Push Past It! brings a raw, real, and at times funny approach to handling challenging behaviors and understanding why most behavior-management strategies don't work. Author Angela Searcy shares real-world examples, proven solutions, and new approaches to overcoming classroom disruptions using her PUSH PAST IT approach. Beyond behavioral-management strategies, Push Past It! will teach you how to:

• See children's behavior as communication
• Understand what is (and is not) developmentally appropriate behavior
• Identify when to seek support
• Communicate and listen more effectively
• Help children overcome their own challenging behaviors
• Take care of yourself too!

What does a harmed child look like? It's the little girl on the playground who has mysterious bruises on her legs. It's the three-month-old baby boy who arches his back when you try to hold him. It's the four-year-old who bites and hits when asked to clean up. These are the faces of traumatized children. As an early childhood professional, you play a key role in the early identification of maltreatment and unhealthy patterns of development. You are also the gateway to healing. In Reaching and Teaching Children Exposed to Trauma, you will find the tools and strategies to connect with harmed children and start them on the path to healing.

Because their vocabularies haven't yet caught up with their thoughts and emotions, young children often struggle to communicate. Sign language can help them express themselves effectively to adults and peers—without the emotional outbursts caused by frustration!

Simple Signing with Young Children: A Guide for Infant, Toddler, and Preschool Teachers, rev. ed. features the latest research to equip educators and caregivers with the tools and resources to teach young learners how to effectively communicate. This user-friendly instruction manual will help teachers and caregivers:

• Enhance classroom management and ease transitions
• Support positive social behavior
• Help children learn impulse control
• Assist children in expressing emotions and needs

Parents are eager to help their children learn, but teaching young children complicated scientific and mathematical concepts can be intimidating. Simple STEAM helps parents realize they don't need to be engineers or scientists to support STEAM learning.
• Help children explore STEAM concepts with fun and engaging activities
• Discover STEAM learning opportunities in everyday activities and experiences
• Prepare children for kindergarten
• Build crucial 21st century learning skills, including collaboration, communication, creativity and problem solving, curiosity, and critical thinking
• 152 pages

Over 700 rhymes, songs, poems, fingerplays, and chants The Complete Book and CDs of Rhymes, Songs, Poems, Fingerplays, and Chants gives children a variety of ways to fall in love with rhythm, rhyme, repetition, and structural sequence—important building blocks for future readers. The 700 selections will help children ages 3 to 6 build a strong foundation in listening skills, imagination, coordination, and spatial and body awareness. The accompanying CDs feature 50 songs guaranteed to get everyone up and moving!

With the help of this book, teachers will learn to utilize a variety of shared creative strategies and techniques—from aromatherapy to affirmations—to address and adjust problematic behavior in the classroom while simultaneously promoting resilience and active engagement in learning. Penned by an experienced school developmental psychologist, When Nothing Else Works book builds upon the latest behavioral research and evidence-based practices. Rather than simply providing solutions for the toughest behavioral problems, it explains why certain strategies are successful and others are not, what helps children develop a growth mindset, and how to develop an intervention plan.

Preschool is a time of wonder when curiosity, development, and learning intersect. While the new sights, routines, and experiences can make preschool exhilarating, what about children who struggle? Perhaps they exhibit odd behaviors: chewing on clothing, covering their ears, avoiding certain textures, refusing to sit with peers, screaming when frustrated, hitting, kicking, or biting.

Wired Differently will help you to decode what may seem like everyday challenging behaviors. It's possible that these children are struggling with sensory processing disorder (SPD).

• Differentiate between everyday challenging behaviors, and those that could signify something much more
• Understand what sensory processing disorder (SPD) is and how it can interfere with a child's learning
• Learn how to include sensory processing strategies as part of a typical classroom routine, and why they're important for all children
• Effectively communicate with families about SPD behaviors and helpful learning techniques