Social and play skills are important developmental tasks for young children. Typically developing children learn appropriate social skills quite naturally and without specific intervention while interacting with other children in playful environments. Young children with disabilities, however, usually need social skills interventions, and these…

Children and their families and teachers use video-sharing websites for new types of learning and information sharing. With the expansion of the World Wide Web, the ability to freely exchange pattern-based information has grown exponentially. As noted by Alexander, "pattern language development" is a process in which communities freely share…

This basic qualitative study explores preservice teachers' beliefs about what constitutes play. Research for this study focused on 7 preservice teachers enrolled in an early childhood through Grade 4 practicum course at a small private university in south central Texas. The findings of this study indicate that both on an individual and group level…

The objective of this qualitative study was to explore peer interaction in the context of school activities in mainstream classes that included pupils with Down syndrome together with their peers without disabilities in order to identify enabling conditions. Six children with Down syndrome, each of whom was the only one with Down syndrome in a…

Background: Children's representations of mothers in doll-play are associated with child adjustment. Despite the importance of fathers for children's adjustment, especially in the context of maternal psychopathology, few studies have considered children's representations of their fathers. Method: We examined the portrayal of fathers by 5-year-old…

Bowen White is a physician. He founded the Department of Preventive and Stress Medicine at the Baptist Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1983 and later established the center's Department of Wellness and Health Promotion. White is also a clown who goes by the name of Dr. Jerko. For years he mixed these dual interests, skills, and egos…

Play often rewards us with a thrill or a sense of wonder. But, just over the edge of play, uncanny objects like dolls, automata, robots, and realistic animations may become monstrous rather than marvelous. Drawing from diverse sources, literary evidence, psychological and psychoanalytic theory, new insights in neuroscience, marketing literature,…

This study examined naturally occurring toddler peer interactions by means of assessing formal attributes as well as their content. We specifically investigated meanings or topics that toddlers can share in interactions. Twenty-three target children (17-23 months, 11 female) were videotaped for one hour in free-play situations in their daycare…

Advocates for multi-age classrooms claim multi-age groupings benefit children (Brynes, Shuster, & Jones, 1994). Currently, there is a lack of research examining play among students in multi-age classrooms. If indeed there is a positive benefit of play among children, research is needed to examine these behaviors among and between young children in…

This now classic text remains a cornerstone of continuing efforts to develop inclusive peer play programs for children on the autism spectrum. The second edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect major new developments in the field of autism. Notable additions include an updated description of the Integrated Play Groups (IPG) model and…

Twenty-four infants were tested monthly for the production of imperative and declarative gestures between 0 ; 9 and 1 ; 3 and concurrent mother-infant free-play sessions were conducted at 0 ; 9, 1 ; 0 and 1 ; 3 (Carpenter, Nagell & Tomasello, 1998). Free-play transcripts were subsequently coded for maternal talk about mental states. Results…

Children living with chronic illnesses deal with a unique set of challenges, specifically when living in a hospital setting. This counseling experience illustrates how a counselor intern used creativity and solution-focused counseling for goal-setting and exceptional outcomes with a 7-year-old client restricted to a hospital room. The authors…

Designing constructive digital media is a process of mapping and remapping our physical and conceptual worlds in order to determine their meaning. When readers become composers, when users become designers, they may construct for themselves both a digital "Wunderkammer" of evidence and the potential associative connections available…

Learning materials and teaching methods used in early childhood classrooms have fluctuated greatly over the past century. However, one learning tool has stood the test of time: Wood building blocks, often called unit blocks, continue to be a source of pleasure and learning for young children at play. Wood blocks have the unique capacity to engage…

In recent times, physical education teachers have become increasingly aware of the "games-understanding approach" to teaching. As more physical education teachers implement physical education programs that include a games-understanding model, they are becoming increasingly in need of appropriate and authentic assessment strategies. If one accepts…