The Art Playroom

The Art Playroom is a guide for setting up at-home art spaces and introducing art prompts to promote innovative thinking, skill-building, collaboration, and independence.

Art Workshop for Children is not just another book of straightforward art projects. The book's unique child-led approach provides a framework for cultivating creative thinking and encourages the wonder that comes when children are allowed to freely explore the creative process and their materials. As children work through these open-ended workshops, adults are guided on how to be facilitators who provide questions, encourage deep thinking, and help spark an excitement for discovery. Children explore basic materials and workshops that use minimal supplies, and then gradually add new materials to fill the art cabinets as well as new skills and more complex workshops. Most workshops are suitable to preschool-aged children, and each contains ideas for explorations and new twists to engage older or more experienced artists. Interspersed throughout are sidebar essays that introduce perspectives on mess-making, imperfection, the role of adult, collaborative art, and thoughts on the Reggio Emilia method, a self-guided teaching philosophy. These pieces underscore the value of art-making with children, and support the parent/teacher/care-giver on how to successfully lead, question, and navigate their children through the workshops to result in the fullest experiences.

An interior designer and lifestyle coach helps modern moms design lives they love with less stress, less guilt, and more time to pursue their dreams. Balancing the demands of modern motherhood is a tough job. Between kids, work obligations, social commitments, and household duties, trying to fit in a little me time (let alone a date night) can seem practically impossible. For many moms, doing well at work makes them feel like they’re failing at home, and when they focus on their family, they feel like they’re falling behind at work. It’s a vicious cycle that all too often lead to burnout—but there really is another way. The Possibility Mom provides practical solutions for keeping the balance of a modern mother’s life with less stress, less guilt, and more satisfaction. Here, you’ll learn smart ways to trim your to-do list, clarify your priorities, get more done in less time, and live the life you love―one that you design.

The multiplicity of levels at which process operates for art therapists is the theme of this book. What happens during a therapy session is examined, as are the client's response, which is experienced through the medium of the art form itself, and the evolution of the relationship between therapist and client.

Play Therapy, Second Edition, is a thorough update to the 1991 first edition best-selling book, the most widely used text for play therapy courses. It refreshes the history and development in play therapy including results of research done in the past 10 years. A new chapter is included on current issues and special populations relevant to the development of play therapy. The author presents very readable descriptions of play and the history of play therapy; child and therapist characteristics; play room set-up and materials; working with parents; and a number of helpful and interesting case descriptions.

Introduction to Art Therapy: Sources and Resources, is the thoroughly updated and revised second edition of Judith Rubin’s landmark 1999 text, the first to describe the history of art in both assessment and therapy, and to clarify the differences between artists or teachers who provide "therapeutic" art activities, psychologists or social workers who request drawings, and those who are trained as art therapists to do a kind of work which is similar, but qualitatively different. This new edition contains downloadable resources with over 400 still images and 250 edited video clips for much richer illustration than is possible with figures alone; an additional chapter describing the work that art therapists do; and new material on education with updated information on standards, ethics, and informing others. To further make the information accessible to practitioners, students, and teachers, the author has included a section on treatment planning and evaluation, an updated list of resources – selected professional associations and proceedings – references, expanded citations, and clinical vignettes and illustrations. Three key chapters describe and expand the work that art therapists do: "People We Help," deals with all ages; "Problems We Treat," focuses on different disorders and disabilities; and "Places We Practice," reflects the expansion of art therapy beyond its original home in psychiatry. The author’s own introduction to the therapeutic power of art – as a person, a worker, and a parent – will resonate with both experienced and novice readers alike. Most importantly, however, this book provides a definition of art therapy that contains its history, diversity, challenges, and accomplishments.

"The authors . . . make child-centered play therapy readily understandable to those who wish to take advantage of its long history of helping children overcome problems and grow emotionally to a level of maturity difficult to achieve by any other approach." —From the Foreword, by Louise F. Guerney, PhD, RPT-S A comprehensive resource that thoroughly teaches the theory, methods, and practice of child-centered play therapy Child-Centered Play Therapy: A Practical Guide to Developing Therapeutic Relationships with Children offers how-to direction and practical advice for conducting child-centered play therapy. Filled with case studies, learning activities, and classroom exercises, this book presents extensive coverage of play therapy applications such as setting goals and treatment planning, as well as recommendations for family and systemic services that can be provided along with play therapy. This rich resource provides: A thorough introduction to the theory and guiding principles underlying child-centered play therapy Skill guidance including structuring sessions, tracking, empathy, responding to children's questions, and role-play Effective ways of determining what limits to set in the playroom and how to set them in a therapeutically effective manner Clear methods for monitoring children's progress through stages as well as external measures of progress Practical guidance in adjunct therapist tasks such as playroom set-up, documentation, ending therapy, and working with parents, teachers, and principals Endorsed by Louise Guerney—a founding child-centered play therapy figure who developed the skills-based methods covered in this book—Child-Centered Play Therapy comprehensively and realistically introduces practitioners to the child-centered approach to play therapy and addresses how to incorporate the approach into schools, agencies, or private practice.

Revealing how to decorate and organize the entire home to help adults and kids coexist in harmony--and in style--this book covers storing and organizing kidsU stuff so it doesn't take over the house, and presents clever ways of establishing an environment that's adaptable to the ever-changing needs of growing children.