As children get older, they become better able to discriminate between impossible and improbable statements and they realize that improbable events can occur in reality while impossible ones cannot. However, when children hear about extraordinary events from fictional entities (e.g., popular characters from children's media), they may be more…

This article aims to provide insights of social justice awareness in young children's pretend play (2-6 years old) involving shopping activities in the nursery and the children's museum. Previous literature acknowledges the importance of grocery exhibits and relevant learning centres in the cognitive and socio-cultural development of children, but…

In this study, the authors assessed children's ability to use information overheard in other people's conversations to judge the reality status of a novel entity. Three- to 9-year-old children (N = 101) watched video clips in which two adults conversed casually about a novel being. Videos contained statements that explicitly denied, explicitly…

Like many a modern play theorist, both Mark Twain and Walt Disney were enchanted by the way children act out stories, in particular pirate tales. For both Twain and Disney, this fascination grew out of their small-town, midwestern boyhoods, where avid reading and fantasy play helped stave off boredom and fill emotional gaps for both of them. Even…

A preeminent play-theory scholar reviews a lifetime devoted to the study of play in a lively, even playful, recounting of his illustrious career and some of its autobiographical roots. The author covers the development of his three major theories of play--as a viability variable, as culturally relative play forms, and as a co-evolutionary…

Formats the course of children's fantasy in relation to time and experience. Describes a model for understanding the relation between fantasy and development. (RJC)

A variety of classroom activities are offered in this paper as ways of exercising children's imaginations. Following a discussion of the need for developing creative thinking in children, some ways to establish the freedom or atmosphere to begin fantasies are offered and a guided fantasy technique for classroom use is outlined. The second half of…

This paper provides an analysis of plot structure in stories freely narrated by five-to-ten-year-old elementary school children. The question was raised whether the stories, collected over a two-year period, would reflect the children's transition from home to school by a shift from a private to a public character. Structural analyses of plot,…

Challenges the notion evident in discourse about children and television that fantasy and make-believe are self-evidently appropriate genres for children and that children are more imaginative than adults. Draws from social psychology and anthropology theories to argue that fantasy and imagination are basic to the way that all humans organize…

Suggests ways in which the schools and universities can confront the psychological and social impact of television on children. (Author/IRT)

This paper discusses the effects of a technological society on the growth and development of children. There is a feeling among preschool and elementary teachers that many children today are excitable, unable to commit themselves to an activity, unable to concentrate well, and speak glibly without understanding. These teachers speculate that…