Pretend play provides enriched environments for multiple cognitive and social purposes. The quality of children's pretend play depends on the process, including children's back and forth proposals and responses about the play frames. Proposing and responding to play ideas with metacommunication use, leadership-followership interactions are…

Early writing (i.e. young children's emerging skills prior to the onset of skilled writing) provides important foundations for literacy; however, its components are not evenly understood, assessed, or supported. Transcription skills (handwriting/spelling) are emphasized, while other aspects of composing are often sidelined. Understanding multiple…

This qualitative case study explores the intersection of family literacy, bilingualism, and critical media literacy by examining how mother-child conversations about children's videos helped preschool, bilingual children develop critical perspectives on gender roles. As part of a larger qualitative study, this study focused on 4-year-old,…

Studies have reported the importance of intervention programs to support early literacy in preschool. However, very few studies have tested the efficacy of intervention programs based on the syllabic method. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a novel computer-based program based on the syllabic method for preschoolers (the Simo-syl…

Using data from a longitudinal German large-scale study and structural equation modeling, this study investigated the effects of different dimensions of the early home learning environment (HLE) as well as the effect of language-related preschool quality at the age of 3 to 5 years on students' later school-relevant language proficiency (as…

Executive functions (EFs) play a crucial role in academic performance. In the present study, we aimed to improve EFs through a group-based cognitive training. Thirty-three typically developing children (age mean: 58.80 ± 7.04 months) were recruited in a random clinical trial design in two intervention (n = 18) and active control (n = 15) groups.…

Evidence was generated from a cross-section of 5,375 students who were completing primary education in 2014, as well as from their parents and school heads, across 309 primary schools located throughout Bangladesh, a South Asian country belonging to the global lower-middle-income category. Though the official duration of preschool education in…

Parents boost STEM skills by scaffolding children's attention and discovery during play, but many need support doing so. Using human-centered design (HCD) methods, we created activity kits fostering parents' (a) involvement in and (b) valuing of parent-child play to promote preschoolers' STEM skills. Study 1 documents how HCD methods informed the…

Technological development has experienced exponential growth, providing more opportunity for enhancing scientific progress based on objective measures. To date, accelerometer (movement monitors) and subjective observations have led researchers to create a mark of reference in preschool education; however, the use of positioning technology is still…

This study examines how reading bullying-themed children's picture books and role-playing based on these books help young children develop perspective-taking abilities and empathy as well as understanding of bullying. Twenty-one 5-year-old children enrolled in a Flower Garden childcare center located in a metropolitan city in South Korea…

The accessibility of mobile technologies opens a new world of possibilities for parents to support their children's learning through game-based numeracy apps. Carefully designed numeracy apps can be effective at improving children's foundational numeracy skills. In the absence of industry standards for quality, however, it is important to…

With a growing number of multilingual children entering early childhood education, teachers are challenged to create appropriate learning opportunities for all children. Given diverse literacy skills and cultural backgrounds, early childhood educators might provide different support to children after an inappropriate child response depending on…

In this study, we worked with both Turkish and U.S. samples to reveal how cultural influences might manifest themselves in the context of child-teacher relationships from children's perspectives. There were 243 preschoolers and 26 classrooms included in the U.S. sample. In the Turkish sample, 211 preschool children from 41 classrooms participated.…

Executive function (EF) is an early cognitive skill that rapidly develops during the preschool years. One of the common EF issues in young children is inhibitory control. This study investigates the impact of music-movement activities on children's inhibitory control. We designed the music-movement training (MMT) program for preschoolers to…

The important role of early self-regulation skills has been repeatedly demonstrated in research. However, there is a lack of studies that have simultaneously examined the influence of hot and cool self-regulation skills on school performance and behavior problems in a longitudinal design from preschool to elementary school and controlling…