Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often lack symbolic play skills. Attribution of pretend properties (APP) is a type of symbolic play in which a child tacts pretend properties of an object (e.g., smelling a toy flower and saying, "It smells like a rose!"). Three Chinese boys (5-6 years of age) with ASD served as participants.…

The importance of children's perspectives is now well-established and there has been much attention afforded to appropriate methods for listening to children within the research. Whilst language-based research methods, such as interview, remain commonplace, children's representations are increasingly included as data in educational research.…

This article concerns young children's social preferences in early childcare in Denmark. Based on detailed and long-term ethnographic observations, the analysis shows how children's choices of playmates are patterned in ways that reflect their various social and cultural experiences in and out of the institutional settings. In general, children…

The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between technology integration and play from a whole child perspective, specifically through online play groups. As play continues to decline and vanish from our schools completely, the author believes we must reexamine the countless benefits of play across STREAM education. With current…

Newton's cradle is a well-known physics toy that is commonly used by teachers to demonstrate conservation laws in mechanics. It can also be used to investigate the physics of colliding objects, by recording motion of the balls on video film. Various experiments are described using 3-ball and 5-ball cradles, showing how different types of collision…

Understanding others' perspectives and integrating this knowledge in social interactions is challenging for young children; even adults struggle with this skill. While young children show the capacity to understand what others can and cannot see under supportive laboratory conditions, more research is necessary to understand how children implement…

A child's home environment has been shown to be related to the development of early numeracy skills in some countries. However, significant relationships between home learning environment and math achievement have not consistently been found, and likely vary across different cultural and socio-political contexts. Here we explored the home…

This paper presents a natural experiment using a play situation with specific toys to examine and compare the characteristics of 33 Norwegian-speaking female pedagogical employees' child-directed speech (CDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS). Vowel pitch, duration, format frequency, and vowel space area of the vowels /a:/, /i:/, and /u:/ as well as…

A mechanical model of light propagation helps to show that optical refraction is related to the speed of light and how it changes from one medium to another. A tricycle toy robot is used to realize the model. Left and right wheels independently change their speed (high or low) in response to the local color (white or black, respectively) of the…

We investigate the motion of fidget spinners of different configurations with the help of simple devices. Physical quantities associated with the fidget spinner motion like angular speed, moment of inertia and kinetic energy are determined and compared in different configurations. A configurable modification of the fidget spinners is done to…

How can teachers take a traditional field trip and turn it into a component of a rich learning unit? The author found success in connecting a science, technology, and design class to the experiences students engaged in during a recent trip to a zoo. While students were focused on creating an enrichment toy for animals, the true enrichment was in…

At present there is little evidence documenting children's possession-based behaviours during play within preschool settings. This ethnographic study observed the same group of 12 children over a four-month period during sustained bouts of indoor and outdoor play. An event sampling approach was employed in order to identify episodes of…

Children's adherence to gender stereotypes can be detrimental, yet interventions to tackle stereotyping have achieved mixed success. Few studies have examined interventions developed collaboratively by educators and researchers, and the impact of interventions that focus on increasing perceived similarities between genders has yet to be tested.…

Community engaged learning has demonstrated educational benefits and is an especially promising method to engage a diverse group of students in engineering. In this work, we present toy adaptation for children with disabilities as a novel community engaged learning tool. According to students surveyed, this process is enjoyable, demonstrates the…

Understanding others' perspectives and integrating this knowledge in social interactions is challenging for young children; even adults struggle with this skill. While young children show the capacity to understand what others can and cannot see under supportive laboratory conditions, more research is necessary to understand how children implement…