This book is designed for use by parents at home to help them encourage the development of necessary skills in their preschool-age children through play and other daily living experiences. The activities are presented as a series of short paragraphs written in the first person from the child's perspective with a box that the child can check when…

Summarized in this volume are concepts, presented and developed at a roundtable discussion by scientists and child health professionals, focusing on aspects of children's play behavior. Participants sought to answer three questions: (1) What is play behavior and what is known about it? (2) How does play contribute to infant and child development?…

Preschool children's fears of animals and the dark were investigated in an effort to examine how preschoolers use play as a medium for expressing fearful emotions. A total of 48 children participated in the study. Interviews with parents were used to identify 12 preschoolers who were anxious about the dark and 12 who were anxious about dogs; 24…

This document, designed to introduce all ages to a selection of popular Chinese games, describes these games and provides instructions and materials for making the items needed to play most of them. Section 1 suggests class activities that can be related to some of the games. Section 2 presents instructions for the physical or outdoor games of:…

This paper reviews literature on teachers' roles in children's play, discusses implications for teacher education, and proposes ways to help teachers better understand and perform their roles. Discussion focuses on research identifying four teacher roles: observer, organizer, participant/leader, and trainer. Research also shows that large numbers…

Outlined are preliminary findings from a study of computer use by Australian preschool children. Subjects were 90 children of 4 years who were enrolled in four Sydney preschool classes. A computer was set up in a learning center and was available to the children during free play sessions. Children's behaviors were observed and recorded as the…

This paper summarizes how Chomsky's methodological principles of linguistics may be applied to the clinical interpretation of children's play. Based on Chomsky's derivation of a "universal grammar" (the set of essential, formal, and substantive traits of any human language), a number of hypothesized formal universals of…

Children are encouraged early in life to adopt socially appropriate sex-role activities and behaviors. Parents influence their children's behavior and attitudes through the toys they choose for the children and the toy play they sanction. The term androgynous is used to indicate the blending of masculine and feminine characteristics. This study…

The manual is intended to provide suggestions for play to parents of young children with exceptional educational needs. Nineteen types of activities are described and pictured, including make believe with boxes, dress-up activities, kitchen play, bubbles, small motor activities using beans and buttons, use of throw-away materials, painting,…

The ways in which fathers and mothers communicate with and teach their 6-month-old first-born infants were compared. Twenty-two white, middle class mothers and fathers were videotaped interacting with their infants (11 male, 11 female) on 10 tasks. Trained observers coded the parents' interaction with their infants on the following variables:…

What children do in play is simultaneously influenced by the properties of the play object and the skills of the child. Properties of objects lend themselves to re-engagement in investigative play or support for shared action. Repeated play with particular objects increases the number of actions possible with these objects. The process of…

There are many forms of outdoor learning. In the UK outdoor adventures, residential centres, field studies, Forest School and play in the outdoors are all available to some extent for the three to eleven age group. Each type has distinct aims and purposes but there are however some commonalities which may point to what the special nature of the…

The current study was initated as an attempt to further inquiry, in which the child comes to perceive and make attributions to social others, by examining the developmental changes in the bases for such perception. (Author/RK)

Provided are sample lesson plans for a program to develop pre-language skills in profoundly retarded children and adults. Characteristic of the suggested activities is the stimulation of all sensory channels through structured infant-like play activities in five general areas: oral stimulation, sensory arousal, motor stimulation, vocal play, and…

Eight girls and 8 boys, 4 years of age, were individually administered two measures of role-taking skill (empathy and spatial egocentrism), a measure of classification ability and a measure of sociometric popularity. Activity during free play was also observed. Results support Smilansky's (1968) beliefs concerning the ontogenesis of play in young…