Play by the Book invites individuals & communities to reimagine literacy as something young children can feel, explore, create, and return to with joy.
Sensory Spark Play Kits
Open the kit, spark the play.
Sensory Spark Play Kits are hands-on, literacy-rich play experiences designed to support early language and pre-literacy development through sensory exploration, shared texts, and joyful discovery.
Rooted in the Play by the Book framework, each kit invites children to explore books not just by listening or looking, but by touching, moving, investigating, and creating. Through open-ended sensory play, children build understanding, deepen concepts, and strengthen the foundational skills that support later reading and learning.
Sensory Play Classes
Books hold stories & wonders. Play brings them to life.
Play by the Book Sensory Sensory Play Classes transform reading into a hands-on, sensory-rich experience where stories are explored through movement, materials, conversation, and creation.
Grounded in literacy science, child development, and progressive education, these experiences invite children and the adults who guide them to engage with books not as something to sit through, but as something to touch, investigate, revisit, and respond to creatively. Through carefully curated texts, sensory materials, movement, process art, and skilled facilitation, literacy becomes something children feel, explore, and love.
Sensory Play Classes are offered as Family Workshops (geared towards 6 months-3 year olds) or as Child-Only sessions (geared towards 3-8 year olds).
Professional Development
Turn Books into Invitations: Hands-On Professional Learning for Playful Literacy
Play by the Book professional learning experiences from WonderPlay Learning equip adults to turn everyday read-alouds into meaningful, play-centered literacy experiences. Designed for early educators, librarians, parents, caregivers, and community partners, these sessions blend research-informed practice with hands-on participation so adults leave feeling confident, capable, and ready to use what they learned right away.
What Makes Play by the Book Different
Most literacy programming follows a familiar, linear pattern: read the book → ask questions → complete a craft.
Play by the Book follows a different path, because children don’t learn in straight lines.
It is cyclical, designed with multiple entry points, allowing children and adults to begin wherever curiosity lives and return again and again as understanding deepens.
Sometimes the experience begins with a read-aloud. Other times, it begins in the middle, with materials, movement, or art. A child may start building, painting, or dramatizing, begin narrating their ideas, and then return to the book as an anchor for language, connection, and deeper understanding. Children may cycle back to the text multiple times, each return strengthening vocabulary, comprehension, and confidence.
In Play by the Book, books and texts aren’t finish lines or starting gates. They sit at the center of the wheel, while play, art, movement, and language form the spokes children travel again and again as learning deepens.
