Book excerpt: Play skills are life skills; as children develop them, they also learn important social skills that they will use throughout their lives. Teachers will find successful strategies for implementing changes in the classroom to enhance the environment for play and techniques to help support children’s development. This is the revised edition of the well-respected and relied-upon handbook Pathways to Play. Play contains activity ideas that encourage play skills, checklists to help identify where children are having problems, specific teaching strategies, and assessment options. This new edition also examines how play theory translates into practice.