Describes the variety of play spaces found in urban areas in Denmark: in banks, stores and individual businesses, neighborhood parks and small pocket playgrounds, specialized adventure and traffic playgrounds with supervised activities, and commercial amusement parks. (CM)

The free play behavior of young children allows the opportunity to actively explore, investigate, and manipulate features of the adult world, and to assimilate the characteristics of novel aspects of the environment. (Author)

In view of the developmental value of children's play activity, playground equipment should be constructed of high quality material and should be designed with the child's maximum total growth in mind. (LH)

Stages in developing mentally handicapped children's pretend play are outlined and techniques for assessing a child's play development are described. (SBH)

Role-playing in nutrition has many advantages as an educational technique, including building thoughts, facilitating flexible thinking, promoting awareness, and providing opportunities for practicing food-related behavior. The Curry and Arnaud model for role play is presented in terms of its components and how each component relates to nutrition…

Discusses the New Games movement which promotes a series of innovative creative group games for children and offers a list of games and directions on how to play them. The games provide an unstructured, cooperative alternative to the structured, competitive games traditionally played by young children. (CM)

Suggests several general considerations to keep in mind when selecting play equipment. (MP)

Presents a study of 24 deviant and nondeviant boys between the ages of 6 and 11 years. (CM)

Describes a course on fantasy which included studies of fairy tales, "Alice in Wonderland," and "The Hobbit," and a dramatization of "Through the Looking Glass." (MKM)

Sport is an expression of the personality of the artist-athlete and also is a reflection of the outlook of the age in which it is produced; as society has changed so has its art, athletes, and athletic events. (MM)

Author states that Csikszentmihalyi's flow model seems to be contradictory in distinguishing play as an activity undertaken for the individual's enjoyment of the process itself and play as an extrinsically motivated, goal-oriented activity. (RW)

In reply to Barnett's article, Csikszentmihalyi states that the individual's intrapsychic needs and response to external stimuli are interwoven and cannot be separated into two distinct motivating factors. (RW)

Presents findings from two studies that investigated the social skills of 24 children (ages 2-5) and 20 adolescents with visual impairments. The children interacted with peers at very low levels; however, the majority of best friends identified by the adolescents were without disabilities. Intervention strategies are discussed. (CR)

Presents four articles exploring children's play: (1) "Play, Policy, and Practice: The Essential Connections" (Edgar Klugman, Sandra Waite-Stupiansky); (2) "What's New in Play Research?" (Doris Pronin Fromberg), including play processes and implications for practitioners; (3) "Observing Children's Play" (Margaret Cooney), describing benefits of…

Used a peer rating task and a corresponding teacher rating scale to investigate preschoolers' playmate preferences and perceptions of classmates with and without disabilities. Found that preschoolers with disabilities received lower sociometric ratings than their typically developing peers, but the reasons cited for selecting or rejecting disabled…