We first experience the joy and necessity of belonging to a world beyond the family as we take roles in one another's imaginative play. Together we are inventing new communities, in which matters of friendships, fairness, and fantasy are accessible to all.

Videogames and videogame literacies are an important and growing aspect of education, yet videogaming remains poorly understood and even viewed with suspicion by many who are charged with promoting them. In the case of libraries, such views can lead to insufficient funding and policies that reduce the presence of youth programing that includes…

Spontaneous imaginary companion (SIC) creation in childhood is a typical imaginative play behaviour associated with advanced sociocognitive skills; however, the direction of causality has not been established. To investigate this experimentally, researchers must determine whether children can create, on request, qualitatively equivalent imaginary…

Parents play an important role in children's language development. To our knowledge, no studies have compared fathers' and mothers' use of gestural and verbal communication in dyadic versus triadic contexts. This study aimed at analyzing similarities and differences in the bimodal communication of parents when they play alone with their infant and…

In the literature in recent years, a number of developmental studies have demonstrated the importance of children entering the school environment with a solid foundation of mathematical content knowledge and argued that problem solving, as an important mathematical process, should be acknowledged in early childhood mathematical education. However,…

Purpose: Play and playful literacies shape essential spaces for belonging, connection, transformation and joy: from embodied immersions into fantasy worlds, to the creation of interest-led groups overflowing with varied knowledges and identities, and the disruption of societal hierarchies through roleplayed restorying. Yet, theorizations…

The present study examines the structure and mathematical content of children's mathematical arguments as part of communication in play-based activities. It shows how Nordin and Boistrup's (The Journal of Mathematical Behavior 51:15-27, 2018) framework for identifying and reconstructing mathematical arguments, which includes Toulmin's model of…

Teaching new games among children should not be a new practice to many of students and yet, it does not mean that they will be able to do it well. Therefore, the teaching strategy of Learn-Teach-Play (LTP) seeks to create a simple three stage process in which students will practice their teaching and watch others model the same practice,…

Teaching the properties of geometric shapes in traditional ways does not help children to understand them, nor does it enable them to visualize them. It may need methods that correspond to the characteristics and tendencies of children and more interesting methods based on fun learning. Designing 3D geometric shapes with children through pop-up…

The use of the game in the educational process depends on the attitude of the teachers towards the game. Attitudes are important as a guide in understanding the behavior of individuals. The purpose of this research is to describe the attitudes of teacher candidates towards playing games containing physical activity. In the research, the scanning…

There is a renewed scientific interest in the role of childhood in human evolution, pointing to the explorative phase of a human's life history that shapes how children learn and develop. This study presents a synthesis from evolutionary sciences that considers biases in childhood learning through activities in play, exploration, and social…

The author draws on Lev S. Vygotsky's conception of play and Gunilla Lindqvist's methodology concerning the aesthetics of play to discuss play practice in early childhood classrooms. Based on the study of an educational experiment at a primary school, she discusses how children in a school setting simultaneously engage in developed forms of…

Engagement in play is vital for children to learn 21st-century skills, especially problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, focused attention, and collaboration (Hillman et al., 2014; Singer, 2015; Yogman et al., 2018). These require developing executive functioning skills crucial for school readiness and success. Play fosters brain…

This study examined the interrelationships among playfulness, prosocial skills, and school readiness of Hong Kong kindergarten children across time. Participants were 106 local children (55.6% boys, mean age = 60.0 months) and their parents and teachers. At time 1, parents reported their child's age, gender, and playfulness. Six months later at…

The prevalence of autism is on the rise and this population of students is not academically thriving, thus leading to strained resources and more intervention services across the lifespan. The educational problem is that teachers report being ill-equipped to address the diverse academic needs of their students with autism. The purpose of this…