INSPIRING WONDER, AWE, AND EMPATHY

This book offers a series of best practices for child care providers to nurture a child's spiritual development. It helps educators and parents introduce children to a system that begins with love, nurtured by wonder, and leads to the empathy needed for learning. Provide support and strengthen children's self-awareness through deep connections, increased social awareness, and pro-social behaviors such as kindness, caring, empathy, and reverence. Spiritual moments help children to grow, explore, play, and ask big questions.

Dr. Deborah Schein has been an early childhood educator since 1972. She has a BS in psychology from the University of Southern California at Santa Barbara, a master's degree in education with a focus on curriculum and instruction from Cleveland State University, and a PhD in early childhood education from Walden University. Deborah currently works as an educational consultant and teaches online early childhood graduate courses Champlain College. She offers workshops across the country for national movements and participates in webinars about the connection between spiritual development and nature education for young children. With Mary S. Rivkin, Schein is a coauthor of The Great Outdoors: Advocating for Natural Spaces for Young Children, Revised Edition (NAEYC, 2014) and What's Jewish about Butterflies: 36 Dynamic, Engaging Lessons for the Early Childhood Classroom, with Maxine Segal Handelman (A.R.E. Publishing, 2004). Schein is a wife, mother, and grandmother who is passionate about play, nature, and young children.