Educational software in the form of games or so called "computer assisted intervention" for young children has become increasingly common receiving a growing interest and support. Currently there are, for instance, more than 1,000 iPad apps tagged for preschool. Thus, it has become increasingly important to empirically investigate…

We sought to evaluate the feasibility of conducting a randomized trial to evaluate the efficacy of a preschool/kindergarten curriculum intervention designed to increase 4-year-old children's knowledge of healthy eating, active play and the sustainability consequences of their food and toy choices. Ninety intervention and 65 control parent/child…

Parent-child interactions and characteristics of mothers' child-directed language have been related to children's linguistic development. Studies on parent-child interactions in Turkey have generally focused on children. There have not been many researches on Turkish motherese. This study addresses this gap by exploring the properties of Turkish…

"Growing Up as a Young Artist" is an illustrated book assignment that involves researching family scrapbooks, photo albums and films, and inquiring about family anecdotes for clues to one's artistic roots. Students creatively reflect on their early memories of imaginative events, as each page is filled with memories of creative activities they…

Imagination is one component of creativity; self-expression is another. The early childhood classroom should be full of creative possibilities that allow children to use their imaginations. For creativity to flourish, staff must provide an environment that fosters creative expression. Imagination itself is "the act or power of forming a mental…

The aim of this study is to present the problem solving skill levels of sportsmen who play football professionally, and to determine whether problem solving skill levels differ according to sportsmen's, sports club, age, marital status, parents' educational status, father's occupation, occupation in the game, year of playing football…

For many centuries and in many cultures, jesters recited tales of heroic exploits, but they did more than simply recount past events--they amused, cajoled, and spun tales that transported listeners to the edge of mysterious, unmapped territories. Through the transformative power of play and the imagination, they reworked what was already…

There are several types of characters in video games: the main protagonist/hero, the countless non-player characters (NPCs), and persistent non-player characters (PNPCs). While there is a substantial body of research about PNPCs from a game design point of view, they have been largely ignored by the academic community from a narrative perspective.…

Infants imitate others' individual actions, but do they also replicate others' joint activities? To examine whether observing joint action influences infants' initiation of joint action, forty-eight 18-month-old infants observed object demonstrations by 2 models acting together (joint action), 2 models acting individually (individual action), or 1…

Play, as an educational concept, has entered many kindergartens in China; yet it has not become a core idea, or been prioritised in the teaching and learning process. An ongoing trans-provincial study started in 2008, using observation, interviews and document analyses. Based on findings from nine kindergartens in three provinces, this article…

Four children with autism were taught play skills through the use of video modeling. Video instruction was used to model play and appropriate language through a developmental sequence of play levels integrated with language techniques. Results showed that children with autism could successfully use video modeling to learn how to play appropriately…

Piaget (1962) asserted that children stop engaging in pretend play when they enter the concrete operational stage because they become able to accommodate reality and no longer need to assimilate it to their wishes. Consistent also with the views of Vygotsky, discussion of pretend play in developmental psychology is typically confined to early…

Objective: This study has examined whether or not self-regulatory strategies vary depending on pretend play situations in 40 children with intellectual disability and 40 typically developing children. Method: Their cognitive, linguistic and individual symbolic play levels were assessed in order to match the children of the two groups. During two…

Imaginary play activities are not only enjoyable in their own right, but also offer clear intellectual, social, and emotional benefits to children who participate in them. This article describes the nature of imaginary play as observed in some Montessori classrooms and lays the groundwork for developing a position statement on imaginary play for…

In this paper I develop an alternative to prevailing moral development assumptions in early childhood education. Drawing on a Bakhtinian theoretical framework, theories of identity formation, and examples from my longitudinal research study of child-adult play, I reframe development as a lifelong process of coauthoring ethical identities that may…