The blockbuilding, painting, and oral expressions of young children provide evidence of a natural tendency to symbolize experience and to use the symbolic elements of expressiveness, creativeness, and living form. Up to the present time, educators have not fully grasped the fact that the need to symbolize is at the base of all education. They…

Examines the role of metaphor and narrative in the interpretive organization of feelings and knowledge, especially in children. Looks at a particular case of figurative speech--a child's storytelling--to show how imaginative narrative may carry important clues about the child's inner world of experience. (MG)

Presents evidence that the supposed paradox in which infants find abstract patterns in speech-like stimuli whereas even some preschoolers struggle to find abstract syntactic patterns within meaningful language is no paradox. Asserts that all research evidence shows that young children's syntactic constructions become abstract in a piecemeal…

Asserts that the posited paradox between infancy and toddlerhood language was not eliminated by Tomasello and Akhtar's appeal to infants' robust statistical learning abilities. Maintains that scrutiny of their studies supports the resolution that abstracting linguistic form is easy for infants and that toddlers find it difficult to integrate…

Examines the positive perspective of the nuances of show-and-tell. Suggests that show-and-tell can be: (1) an activity for closure and evaluation, and for clarification of feelings; (2) a forum for expressive and receptive language development; (3) a window into children's thoughts and feelings; and (4) a source for curriculum ideas. (Author/RWB)

Drawing from experiences in teaching kindergarten teachers in Saudi Arabia to conduct "sharing time" or "show and tell" sessions, discusses the activity's affective and cognitive value, indicating that teacher and peer feedback promotes language development and the growth of curiosity and inquisitiveness. Makes practical…

Research on reading has tried, and failed, to account for wide disparities in reading skill even among children taught by the same method. Why do some children learn to read easily and quickly while others, in the same classroom and taught by the same teacher, don't learn to read at all? In "Language Development and Learning to Read", Diane…