In this article, the author, a Forest School Leader with Shropshire Wildlife Trust, shows how nature is the best teacher. She describes a new approach to out-of-classroom learning during which qualified leaders use simple challenges and achievable tasks to encourage child-initiated learning in the great outdoors. At Forest School, children are…

One of the central functions of teaching is formal assessment. However, formal assessment in school physical education often consists of attributing final grades to students at the conclusion of a unit (i.e., summative assessment). Moreover, grades have often been based on effort, attendance, and dress. Practical and authentic assessment…

In this article, which includes three video clips, the author argues that the small experiments, inventions, strategies, and pauses in young children's play seen in the clips reveal a legitimate form of scientific thinking. He notes that science and play both represent a frame of mind, an attitude toward the events one observes. (Contains 3…

Children with autism (mean age = 6 years) were videotaped first interacting with a parent and then with an unfamiliar researcher who imitated the child's behaviours. The researcher showed more imitative and playful behaviours than the parents. In turn, the children showed more imitative behaviour when playing with the imitative researcher than…

Although music educators in training complete a battery of courses pertaining to the playing and teaching techniques of the instruments that will be found in their future classrooms, the intricate details of learning to play and teach the five Western woodwind instruments successfully are at times overlooked in teacher preparation programs.…

Play and playgrounds provide essential experiences for young children's growth, development and enjoyment of life. However, such play experiences are now limited for many children due to excessive fear of risk, or "surplus safety". In this article, the authors examine the pervasiveness of surplus safety in the lives of young children.…

This qualitative study aimed to explore how infants share and experience friendships and examine the role of infant caregivers in social and friendship experiences among infants. The data were collected through classroom observation over a semester. Findings yielded complex and rich social relationships that both infant friends and caregivers…

Children with autism have severe and pervasive impairments in social interactions and communication that impact most areas of daily living and often limit independent engagement in leisure activities. We taught four children with autism to engage in an age-appropriate leisure skill, playing the video game Guitar Hero II[TM], through the use of (a)…

This paper looks at ways in which a group of children aged three-four years exhibited evidence of self-regulation and metacognition. Videotaped episodes of children's activities and audiotaped dialogues between children and practitioners about the activities were analysed using an observational framework. The data here show children of three and…

In September 2008 the author created an encounter between herself and Rick Walker, the Director of Cartwheel Arts, a small community arts company in Rochdale, in the North West of England. As one of the three founding workers of what was then Cartwheel Community Arts in 1984, she hoped to create a conversation which recollected or traced some of…

This study investigates how young children master, construct and understand intelligent rule-based robot behaviors, focusing on their strategies in gradually meeting the tasks' complexity. The wider aim is to provide a comprehensive map of the kinds of transitions and learning that take place in constructing simple emergent behaviors, particularly…

Young preschoolers (ages 2-3) have not been the focus of story drama discussions, as some developmental beliefs suggest that this kind of curriculum is beyond their reach--children in this age group do not yet engage in pretend play, are not generally interested in organized social interaction, and their language skills are too immature. In his…

Infants (n = 24, mean age 13 months and n = 24, mean age 19 months) were tested on an extension of the method introduced by Tomasello and Haberl (2003) to examine the understanding of another person's interest in a novel object. Four objects were presented serially. For two objects, infants played with an experimenter. The infant played with one…

Developmental intergroup theory would predict that children develop fewer or weaker stereotypes about toys that have less distinguishable gender attributes than those that are clearly associated with a gender. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of neutral and ambiguous toys in 31 three- to five-year-old children's play behaviour…

Although virtually all contemporary art teachers list "enhancing creativity" as a key desired outcome of their programs, analysis of lesson plans used in schools suggests that in practice very little curriculum is specifically geared to developing creative abilities. In this paper, the author describes how she developed the curriculum…