"Tools of the Mind" is an early childhood curriculum for preschool and kindergarten children, designed to foster children's executive function through development of self-regulation, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Activities emphasize both executive functioning and academic skills. One study of "Tools of the Mind"…

Blending the arts into students' learning of science concepts through role-play and drama is unusual pedagogy in schools. For seven Australian Year Five students seeking extended learning, advanced scientific concepts were learned during the creative process of script writing and production of a science play called "Hectic Electric". A…

This study examined the planning that occurred when children participated in classroom playcrafting with either adult or child leadership. In a first-/second-grade classroom in an innovative public school, we videotaped 11 sessions in which children volunteered to develop a play with small groups of classmates and seven sessions in which adult…

This article draws from three ethnographic studies of children playing sociodramatically in multilingual, multicultural contexts. Countering a deficit perspective that focuses on what children from nondominant cultures do not know, we use the concept of syncretism to illuminate children's expertise and intentionality as they blend knowledge from…

This article delineates an archetypal approach to drama in education. Participation in drama draws on both conscious and unconscious imaginative capabilities and involves teacher and student in the bedrock of human reaction. Drama could provide us with valuable information concerning archetypes as they unfold in the lives of our children. (MT)

Ways to perk up language arts instruction include skits, choral readings, and full-length plays. Ideas for putting a show together, from making the curtain to having a cast party, are covered. Two readings, a skit, and a play are appended. (MT)

The significance of drama as an expressive form of thinking and feeling lies in its concern with the process of personal engagement with the objective world. A Taxonomy of Personal Engagement is offered and strategies and techniques to engage students are suggested. (MT)

Through the use of some purposeful anachronisms, Tom Stoppard uses his 1993 play "Arcadia" to explore the effects on man's psyche of the transition from Newton's Laws to the laws of thermodynamics and from thermodynamics to chaos theory. However, remarkably similar reactions to these changes are also reflected in works from the actual time periods…

Play is children's work. Alice Honig enumerates from the heart 10 ways in which children learn through play, including building dexterity; social skills; cognitive and language skills; number and time concepts; spatial understanding; reasoning of cause and effect; clarification of pretend versus real; sensory and aesthetic appreciation; extended…

The Spolin Theater Games consist of more than 200 games and exercises to encourage spontaneity, creativity, and interpersonal communication in group settings. This article describes the use of Spolin games in four classes of six- to nine-year-old educationally handicapped children and looks at changes that occurred, particularly in the way…

This article describes the teaching method of Dorothy Heathcote, Professor of Drama at the Institute of Education at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. She uses classroom dramas for her classes, letting the children create their own dramatic situations. (JA)

A selection of Christmas plays and skits in Swiss German. (DD)

Ten seasonal plays are presented: (1) September (nutrition); (2) October (Halloween); (3) November (Thanksgiving); (4 and 5) December (Hanukkah, Christmas); (6) January (Martin Luther King, Jr.); (7) February (friendship); (8) March (Saint Patrick's Day); (9) April (Easter); and (10) May/June (Memorial and Flag Days). (CJ)