Play Therapy Activities by Melissa Lavigne gives so much insight into the thought process and feelings of toddlers and young children. I really appreciated the activities to try at home and gave us something different to do through all this difficult pandemic parenting.

Thank you to #netgalley for the early read.

Loved this insightful and helpful book! Especially during Covid times. I really feel it is important to check in with your child and see how they are handling all these changes and this book does an excellent job of using Play Therapy techniques to do so. I really appreciated them reinforcing the fact that "play" and "play therapy" are two different things and both should be practiced while doing the activities in this book.
Chapter 9 was probably my favorite because it was very reflective and I found a lot of these activities could be used with the elderly (I work with the elderly and loved a lot of these activities).
I would definitely recommend this book for parents/teachers/grandparents/aunts and uncles/etc.

I found this book to be incredibly enjoyable, creative, as well as user-accessible.
I appreciated the beginning forward and explanation on how to use the book and the different ways the activities could be applicable to either a parent or caregiver or fellow play therapist. I liked that it also made it clear that unless done by an actual therapist that it is not indeed therapy but lovely games to play with either a child you were caring for or your own child.

Some of the games that stood out to me:
Story Stones, Magic Mailbox, Imagination Game, Wishing Garden, Feeling Scavenger Hunt, Walk Stop Sit, Sensation Walk, Bubble Freeze, Back to Back Breathing, and Mind Jar.

These not only had a whimsical and creative element about them but they could also be used by multiple parties. As many of these games and activities seemed most applicable to parents, while others would be incredibly inappropriate for a caregiver caring for a child with trauma.

That leads me into a couple of areas I had a concern, such as one of the first Snuggle activities instructing the child to sit in the adult’s lap and other forms of physical affection that could be harmful if done by a well-meaning adult not realizing possibly harm. In this regard, I wish there had been a bit more narrative, or possibly different categorization for parents, caregivers, therapists as each role has a different purpose and power in a situation.

Some activities I felt lacking:
Dreamcatchers: while there is made reference to an abbreviated understanding of what a dream catcher is, I feel a lot more sensitivity might be necessary for this area before creating or giving a Dreamcatcher to a child as an activity outside of an indigenous tribe. I highly recommend that this is looked further into before publication.

Calm Place: This was an activity I loved! However, I felt at the supplemental page with a blank empty square was a bit redundant,

In that same vein of thought, I really do feel that the supplemental activities or pages could be improved up. In order to do the activity with food art, it would be near impossible to properly fill in the animals on the page given their size and simplicity. My thoughts here with low-income families who can use every resource they can get, and I’m buying this book I feel their resources may be limited,

I liked this book and will be taking some of the ideas from it for sure. My children love to play and sometimes I feel like I run out of ideas for them to do so this is a great book to incorporate more play into children's lives.