Play materials designed to enhance children's pretense were investigated; namely, how the specific characteristics of the play sets (thematically open-ended village set vs thematically closed-ended train set) influenced children's play communication regarding their co-construction of shared meanings. Participants included 44 7-year-old focal…

Spontaneous singing is widely acknowledged as an important part of young children's everyday musical experience. However, its fleeting and often private nature makes it difficult to study. Research into young children's singing at home frequently relies on data gathered through parental reporting, and studies are often limited to small sample…

The author examines the childhood experiences of formerly enslaved children. He suggests that the conventional understandings of scholars and historians concerning play may not be applicable to the complex lives of enslaved children because researchers do not consider such children as always propertied beings. Their play practices were molded by…

This study aimed to investigate typically developing preschoolers' behavior toward peers with disabilities in inclusive classrooms, focusing on the co-occurrence of the interactions between children with and without disabilities with various classroom contexts. Behaviors of 22 typically developing preschoolers were observed and coded on two…

Outdoor time is a positive correlate of physical activity in preschoolers; however, children remain highly sedentary even outdoors. This cross-sectional study thus aimed (1) to measure the physical activity levels of 30 preschool-aged children attending a centre-based childcare centre in a remote region located in Northwestern Québec (Canada) and…

Interpretations of Vygotsky's texts have generally focused on the intellectual aspects of children's development, including his theory of play. This article presents a reinterpretation of Vygotsky's theory of play and draws on this theory of art to include emotions as an important part of children's play. I will argue that in play, children's…

Sharing is an important indicator of internalised prosocial values. We examined predictors of sharing of 302 preschoolers with their younger siblings in a one-year longitudinal study. Sharing was observed during different home visits, once with father and once with mother. We examined the following predictors: both children's externalising…

Research Findings: The present study concerns children's behavioral adjustment in the context of pre-primary schools in Tanzania. Twenty teachers and 320 children from 20 pre-primary schools participated in the study. Teacher-child relationships, children's behavioral adjustment, and teachers' cultural beliefs were reported by teachers; classroom…

Many accounts of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) imply that the condition's behavioural "symptoms" are direct reflexes of underlying deficits. In doing so, however, they invariably overlook the social contexts in which symptomatic behaviours occur and are identified as pathological. This study addresses this issue, using conversation…

Children with and without intellectual disabilities were observed playing with toys during both home-based independent play and classroom-based freeplay situations. Categorical and sequential play was analysed for within- and between-group patterns. Within-group patterns during classroom freeplay were similar for both groups. There were no…

The twofold purposes of the investigation were (a) to describe with direct observation data the physical activity behaviors and the accompanying social and environmental events of those behaviors for children in preschools and (b) to determine which contextual conditions were predictors of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and…

A multiple case-study design was used to explore the spontaneous play of three toddlers with disabilities as it emerged in the course of everyday activity in the home. Children were observed at home playing independently and with their mothers. Data consist of videotaped naturalistic observations in the children's homes and mothers' perspectives…

Joint pretence games are implicit rule-governed activities with a normative structure: Given shared fictional stipulations, some acts are appropriate moves, others are inappropriate (i.e., mistakes). The awareness of 2- and 3-year-old children of this normative structure was explored, as indicated by their ability to not only act according to the…

Investigates children's understanding of rules by observing 5-,6-, and 7-year olds engaging in unrestricted group activity as they built and played with a bridge. Reveals that the children's tendency to develop and change rules demonstrated their understanding of rules that were not associated with the rules of adults. (CMK)

It has been well established that young children with communication disorders (CD) have considerable difficulties interacting socially with peers in free-play settings. The central purpose of this study was to determine whether behavioral adaptations of children with CD could contribute to their peer interaction problems. To accomplish this, the…