ABSTRACT
In his foreword to the original version of this book – Mary Sheridan’s Spontaneous Play in Early Childhood (1977) – Professor Jack Tizard described how at the time of Sheridan’s writing, services concerned with children’s intellectual, physical and social needs were grounded in knowledge about the nature of child development. Sheridan’s observations of children’s spontaneous play were invaluable in providing practitioners with an insight into the development of ‘real children in real situations’, allowing the reader to enrich their theoretical knowledge and validate their own experiences.
