This study investigated the developmental pattern of early lexical production and composition in Mandarin-speaking children. Forty Mandarin-speaking children and their parents participated in this one-and-a-half-year longitudinal study, and naturalistic samples of parent-to-child speech in toy play were collected when the children were 1;8, 2;2,…

This cross-cultural multiple case study investigates the approaches of educators in nature-based preschools in Turkey and Germany towards risky play, exploring factors influencing play behaviours and educator roles. Four educators from Turkey and three educators from Germany participated in the study. Through qualitative analysis of interviews and…

This article argues for a reconceptualisation of early childhood education, where learning and development are not only valued by outcome, and aims to investigate how aesthetic processes are organised in ways for the children to be inspired, to compare, explore, and play. Inspired by a Vygotsky perspective and his theories of play, imagination,…

Increasingly early years education recognises the value of engaging in natural play environments for young children's health and wellbeing. Whilst the focus of nature play usually centres around children's engagement in bush settings, this paper examines the connections between children's health and wellbeing, when beach settings become the play…

The aim of this study is to examine whether the emotional intelligence of 5-6 years preschool children differs significantly according to the frequency of outdoor play. The sample consists of 208 children and their parents. The data were collected through Sullivan's Emotional Intelligence Scale for Children (EISC) and the Personal Information…

This theoretical article examines the crucial role of play-based learning (PBL) in enhancing the mathematical skills of children in the Early Childhood Phase, referred to as Foundation Phase (Grade R-3) learners, within a South African context. The article argues that the traditional approach to teaching early childhood mathematics, where teachers…

Risky play helps children build resilience, develop prosocial skills, and support lifelong physical, mental, and emotional well-being. However, societal overemphasis on safety often limits schools' willingness to embrace risky play. Educators' beliefs about risk, lack of training, and restrictive school policies further reduce opportunities for…

This case study applies a raciomultilingual perspective to pre-adolescent language socialization in a majority-African American social and educational context. I examine naturalistic recordings of elementary-school Latinx children during a formative period of migration to Washington, DC, comparing these to contemporary Latinx linguistic…

Children acquiring Japanese differ from those acquiring English with regard to the rate at which verbs are learned (Fernald & Morikawa, 1993). One possible explanation is that Japanese caregivers use verbs in referentially transparent contexts, which facilitate the form-meaning link. We examined this hypothesis by assessing differences in verb…

Nature experiences have been shown to have a number of positive impacts on adults and children (Louv, 2012; Williams, 2017). These benefits include an improvement of one's ability to direct their attention, a reduction in the symptoms of stress, and an increase in creative play. Attention Restoration Theory (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989), Stress…

Executive functions (EF) have been identified as important predictors of children's proximal and distal development. Recent research highlights pretend play as a potential mechanism for EF development, and there has been a call to identify for whom pretense in most beneficial. The current study investigated whether an association found between…

Children's math learning (N = 217; M[subscript age] = 4.87 years; 63% European American, 96% college-educated families) from an intelligent character game was examined via social meaningfulness (parasocial relationships [PSRs]) and social contingency (parasocial interactions, e.g., math talk). In three studies (data collected in the DC area:…

Taking a socio-cultural perspective, in this study we explored the challenges toddlers might face as they practice 1-1 correspondence in the playful context of setting a table, and how different individuals may participate in this playful activity. Findings indicated that toddlers' competence in carrying out one-to-one correspondence may be…

In this systematic review, we examined the rigor and outcomes across 27 object play intervention studies using single-case research methodology. We focused on studies including children age 5 years or younger and examined several descriptive characteristics including materials, instructional packages, and settings. We also analyzed the…

Learning about design and learning through design have emerged in the literature and important works show heuristics and matrices for design cognition and design processes. However, few studies have been directed to the early development of design. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a study that investigated the genesis of…