This article traces the evolution of kindergarten from its focus on children, to its focus on outcomes, to its current focus on literacy and math. The early childhood parts of kindergarten are losing ground to growing allocation of kindergarten time to academic content. A more ecological approach to kindergarten involves reincorporating play into…

The literature on autism describes many different types of therapy techniques and teaching strategies. Most are interventions that help a child with autism move from one developmental level to the next and learn to manage his or her behavior. Although important, such strategies and therapies do not examine how a family's cultural practices may…

Infant mental health specialists are increasingly expected to treat complex mental health disorders in very young children. Selective mutism is an anxiety disorder which can lead to functional impairment across home, preschool, and community settings. The authors share their experiences with Keylah, a preschooler with significant social anxiety…

The article reports and discusses a long-term qualitative study of forty 8-10-year-old students who regularly played a math game during math lessons for 9 weeks. The goal was to explore the relations between (i) some of the "pedagogical principles" that underlie the game and (ii) the "playing practice" in terms of what actually takes place when…

The relationship between maternal symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and specific maternal behaviors was examined in a community sample of 40 mothers of infants aged 3-8 months. It was hypothesized that maternal ADHD symptoms would be related to lower levels of maternal sensitivity, and higher levels of maternal…

The primary intention was to explore the nature and content of preschoolers' conversations during lunchtime in their classroom. Secondary goals included discovering how eating at school framed the children's conversation and play, and the influence of gender on children's conversations and forms of play. Participants were 65 primarily…

The present study aims to investigate the association between parenting behaviours, children's daily activities and their cognitive development. Participants were 52 Turkish-German and 65 German pre-school children and their mothers, who were matched in terms of education level (10-12 years of schooling). Children's cognitive skills were assessed…

The exploratory study focused on describing typical routines of preparing for winter outdoor play with preschool children and their teachers. Naturalistic observations, interviews and photographs resulted in extensive examples of children's development in cognitive understanding of winter and winter-related concepts. Observations of teachers and…

Young children's leadership is an undertheorized and underresearched topic. Much of the research literature involves paired children working on adult-set tasks that are aimed to provide data on specific aspects of children's collaborative work. This article describes and discusses an investigation into children's leadership styles within…

The current study investigated the influence of maternal ADHD symptoms on: (a) mothers' own social functioning; (b) their child's social functioning; and (c) parent-child interactions following a lab-based playgroup involving children and their peers. Participants were 103 biological mothers of children ages 6-10. Approximately half of the…

Key characteristics of autism include differences in communication, social interaction, and restricted or repetitive activities and interests (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Because of these differences, active engagement is challenging for many young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, such engagement in a variety of…

This paper charts the journey made towards verbal communication with Mackenzie, a boy who was three years old at the start of treatment and diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder. In this paper, I bring together diverse areas of research and demonstrate how they inform my clinical practice. Together, these ideas created a multimodal and…

Chinese children with an urban household registration ("hukou") normally attend subsidized preschools for three years prior to primary school. This is an experience available to relatively few of China's many millions of migrant children whose families are registered as rural residents but choose to migrate to urban areas. This paper…

In 2001, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued Guidelines for Preschool Education (GPE) (trial version) to call on early childhood practitioners to use a child-centered and play-based approach to teaching and learning. The guidelines also include mathematics within the science domain and described its standards in a way that significantly…

The purpose of this study was to explore the predictive relationship between the level of symbolic representation in preschoolers' sociodramatic play and reading and mathematics abilities and rate of growth in early elementary grades for children with and without disabilities. The relationship of three aspects of sociodramatic play--symbolic…