Drawing on theoretical perspectives related to play and identity, play as a literary and social text, and multimodality, I present an analysis of a play narrative centred on the theme of playing house. The narrative exemplifies the interconnections between literacy and identity in the social and cultural world of a young girl growing up in a…

This article surveys existing research on the role of humor in early childhood. Babies and toddlers use humor to develop, apply, and expand their understanding of existing concepts; define themselves; and establish relationships with peers and caregivers. Humor helps young children view stressful situations in a nonthreatening way. As soon as…

A direct pathway to children's literacy forms through the development of shared meaning. Proto-narrative construction and social pretend play with peers can be important tools in children's developing emergent literacy. Early child-care programs provide relatively little unstructured time. To reemphasize shared meaning in the lives of children,…

The paper draws on ethnographic data on children's game-playing in Khwezi Park outside Cape Town. This unsupervised, child-choreographed play is seen as a site of meaning-making and identity work where children draw on a range of resources and influences to take and make meaning. These resources for semiosis and interaction are multilingual and…

This research examined exposure to classroom noise of 25 full-time teaching staff in 14 preschool settings located across Western Sydney. The results indicated that one teacher exceeded the maximum permissible level of daily noise exposure for employees under the health and safety legislation. Three staff approached this level and 92% of teachers…

This study found significant relationships between first- and second-order cultivation measures and TV viewing, but found a relationship with video game play for only two variables in a sample of 322 Flemish 3rd and 6th year secondary school children. This suggests that the absence of a relationship with video game play is not the result of the…

The centenary of the first performance of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan was celebrated in December 2004. Taking account of the various events in Britain to mark the occasion--newspaper articles, radio and television programmes, retrospects in the original theatre--this article examines the status and popularity of Peter Pan after a hundred years. The…

The purpose of this study was to describe the pattern in which English-speaking children acquire intonation. A second goal was to account for emerging intonation from a theoretical perspective. Six groups of 10 children each between the ages of 6 and 23 months participated in individual play sessions with their mothers and an experimenter. Pitch…

As children see the first snowflake fall from the sky, they are filled with anticipation of playing in the snow. The snowy environment presents a wonderful opportunity for presenting interdisciplinary activities that connect snow play, snow formation, and snow stories with manipulative activities, gymnastic balances, and dance sequences. In this…

Fifty 1-to 3-year-olds were asked to imitate: (1) the rolling of a cylinder down an incline and (2) the making of an incline with a board and a block. Their incorrect imitations and progress were videotaped and analyzed, and interpreted in light of Piaget's theory about the elaboration of logico-mathematical relationships in an interrelated way.…

For many children across the globe, whether in low or high income nations, growing up in the 21st century will mean living in overcrowded, unsafe and polluted environments which provide limited opportunity for natural play and environmental learning. Yet Agenda 21, the Habitat Agenda and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child…

Research has increasingly focused on play as a social rather than a solitary domain. Play is a stage on which conflicts and wishes may be expressed to a responsive and containing other. As a group, late-adopted latency children show high levels of inhibition, regression and catastrophe in play, and adoptive parents may find this hard to engage…

Evidence of the ways in which children utilise neighbourhood spaces for play and socalising is presented here. Findings are based on research conducted on the social and environmental geographies of children in middle childhood in Fife, Scotland. Photographs and maps produced by the children are used to illustrate their active, emotional and…

How can training develop the philosophical commitment that library staff members need to successfully lead collaborative projects? How do conversation as a training model and play as an activity shape the collaborative learning process? How do we stimulate libraries and library staff to assume leadership roles in community building? This article…

The correspondence between direct observation and informant ratings of preschool children with specific language impairment (SLI) was investigated. Preschoolers with and without SLI were observed during free play using the "Social Interactive Coding System" (SICS; Rice, Sell, & Hadley, 1990). In addition, teachers and parents…