Creativity is highly valued when teaching children to play, and it is through acts of play children begin to learn about the world. However, along the road to adulthood, creative minds often become stifled. Creativity may be viewed as impractical or unnecessary when learning hard and true facts, and yet, as experienced in childhood, creativity…

Students benefit from positive sport experiences in physical education. If designed well, sport provides a social avenue for physical activity and strengthens student achievement in psychomotor (e.g., motor skill), cognitive (e.g., decision-making), and affective (e.g., personal and social responsibility) learning domains. Unfortunately, not all…

Expressive arts group supervision is the use of music, stories, movement, poetry or prose, role-play or psychodrama, art, guided imagery, or play to help trainees develop reflective skills (Wilkins, 1995), express thoughts and feelings (Knill, Levine & Levine, 2005; Lahad, 2000), develop new perspectives (Gladding, 2005), increase communication…

Highly practical, instructive, and authoritative, this book vividly describes how to conduct child-centered play therapy. The authors are master clinicians who explain core therapeutic principles and techniques, using rich case material to illustrate treatment of a wide range of difficulties. The focus is on nondirective interventions that allow…

Infant-parent play with toys is an early form of social communication, and the toy features (i.e., affordances), as well as the child's language competence, contribute to the developmental level of the play and the types of play actions that occur. This research, conducted in cooperation with a toy manufacturer, investigated how the affordances of…

Many educational theorists who study child development concur that the importance of play related materials in schools, homes and libraries is vital to the concept of play and learning. As academic librarians responsible for information literacy, and as the education liaison for the management and collection development of the instructional…

The objective of this study is to present and to evaluate the E-Junior application: a serious virtual world (SVW) for teaching children natural science and ecology. E-Junior was designed according to pedagogical theories and curricular objectives to help children learn about the Mediterranean Sea and its environmental issues while playing. In this…

The research question addressed in this paper is: What specific elements in the outdoor environment draw children's attention? The new approach to Welsh early years education--the "Foundation Phase: Framework for children aged 3-7 years in Wales" (DCELLS 2008)--requires the inclusion of both teacher-led and child-initiated activities and…

The purpose of this article was to describe a taxonomy of pretend play for children with disabilities based on a systematic review of the literature to characterize pretend play. Thirty-seven studies were identified as measuring pretend play in children with disabilities. Several inconsistencies were found in the measurement of pretend play across…

In this exploratory case study, 4 early intervention providers' use of collaborative intervention strategies and everyday activities was examined in relation to the participation of a small group of Latina mothers (n = 10) during home visits over a 6-month period in an urban community. Videotapes (n = 40) of home visits were clustered into more…

The cognitive domain in physical education is an important component of quality physical education as demonstrated through Standard 2 of the National Standards for Physical Education which state that the physically educated person "demonstrates understanding of movement concepts, principles, strategies, and tactics as they apply to learning and…

Learning has been defined in many ways as having a certain degree of overlap with both intelligence and development. From a movement point of view, "learning is defined as a relatively permanent change in a person's capability to execute a motor skill as a result of practice or experience." So learning is a result of an individual interacting with…

Mathematical Mediated Language (MML) is a teaching technique designed to enhance children's learning. Teachers who use MML engage in a dialogue with children about mathematics concepts that apply to the activity in which they are engaged. This dialogue links "conceptually related linguistic and mathematical knowledge." In other words, teachers…

Play has been traditionally recognized as an activity within early childhood education, but in actuality, it has substantial importance to learners at all levels. Since the idea of play is abstract and has no pre-determined outcomes, some teachers feel uneasy about allowing students to play with concepts and materials, especially with the advent…

Blocks are one of the most popular playthings for children. The purpose of this article is to describe the use of block play in developing parent-child relations. This paper has two major parts. First, a brief historical overview highlights the critical roles of child's block play in learning and development. Block play contributes to children's…