As California's elementary schools reopen after prolonged physical closure due to COVID-19, attention to healing the school community will be essential. Although there is wide variation in the timing and formats with which schools plan to reopen, it is clear that when students reenter school buildings they will be eager to reconnect with friends…

Children with disabilities often engage in less complex play and fewer spontaneous pretend play behaviors. Research has highlighted the value of providing caregivers with sustained support to promote their active involvement in the learning of their children with disabilities. Caregivers; however, are rarely offered opportunities to facilitate…

Meeting the sensory needs of young children with Autism Spectrum Disorder can be challenging for special education teachers and staff. Children with ASD often experience sensory processing challenge, in turn impacting their ability to participate in daily occupations such as play (Schaff, et al., 2018). Evidence reveals that teachers have varying…

This study explores the captivating world of toy unboxing videos as a space for emergent bilingual children to engage in translanguaging practices. Through the lens of translanguaging, which encourages the unrestricted use of full linguistic repertoires, this research examines the experiences of two five-year-old immigrant and emergent bilingual…

COVID-19 posed little danger to children. Nevertheless, the South African government imposed lockdown measures that impeded children's education, play and food. Schools were closed, feeding schemes were halted and organised sports were banned. In this study of South African children's experience during the 2020-22 pandemic, we use the capabilities…

This article explores the role of the reportative BIN in Yucatec Maya language acquisition and socialization among children aged 4 years and above, focusing on their interactions during pretend play. Building upon prior research on caregivers' strategic use of BIN, the study aims to elucidate the nuanced meanings and functions of the reportative…

Sound symbolism, the iconic link between speech sounds and meanings, helps children's verb learning. In sound symbolically rich languages such as Turkish, hearing sound symbolic words might facilitate early verb learning and later language-specific expressions of motion events, by providing an easier way to map verbs onto events. These links could…

The author uses a dialogical autoethnographic approach informed by symbolic interactionist theory to examine the role of toys, play, and parenting decisions on his childhood development and adult opportunities and interests. He examines how self, others, social contexts, and objects, particularly toys and adult analogues for those toys, came…

Across geographically diverse samples, engagement in stimulating activities with young children is considered an important element of parenting that promotes cognitive, behavioral, and social-emotional development. Indicators of stimulation activities are often summed, based on the assumption that more stimulation is better and that different…

Following the social turn in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) in the 1990s (Block, 2003), researchers have increasingly focused on the emic perspective of learners. As a result, identity, subjectivity, and agency have come to the forefront in SLA research. In an effort to afford learners the means to negotiate meaning more freely and to position…

Within Orthodox Jewish early childhood programs, gender roles of the Shabbat Party promote heteronormative gender expectations that contend with values about children, teaching, and Judaism. Interviews with 15 educators suggested tensions between gender flexible attitudes and beliefs that gender unfolds naturally. Pretend play was considered a…

Home environments have the potential for rich literacy activities. Indeed, what parents do in and outside the home to support their child's learning has a powerful impact on their child's development, not only in terms of educational outcomes but also for wider ones, such as children's wellbeing. The impact of the home learning environment (HLE)…

Researchers can study complex developmental phenomena with all the inherent noise and complexity or simplify behaviors to hone in on the essential aspects of a phenomenon. We used the development of walking as a model system to compare the costs and benefits of simplifying a complex, noisy behavior. Traditionally, researchers simplify infant…

Caroline Pratt, the founder of the City and Country School, is one of the few educators who tried to work out a program that would engage and develop students' imaginations. Along with other progressive educators, however, she has been criticized for her child-centeredness, that is, valuing children's spontaneity at the expense of planning and…

Adult playfulness contributes to well-functioning romantic relationships, claim the authors, who study the association between playfulness of several kinds (other directed, lighthearted, intellectual, whimsical) and six specific attitudes towards love they call love styles--"eros," "ludus," "storge,"…