This report describes the operation of a mother and toddler group, one of several activities of 123 House, a community-based project in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The basic aim of the mother and toddler group, which operates 5 mornings a week, is to give mothers a chance to socialize. On 2 mornings, various courses are offered. Throughout the 4…

This study examined the relationship between teachers' beliefs and intentions about the importance of teacher-child interactions. The participants were 71 early childhood teachers who had worked with children ages 35 for an average of 9 years (range 0-29). Roughly 35% of the teachers had majored in early childhood education, and 63% held at least…

Data from studies of social entry and social rejection among preschool children were used in this discussion of the systematic use of videotaped records to answer questions about preschool children and the appropriate kind of analysis to employ with the social exchanges recorded. Collected materials were organized in a text-oriented relational…

Day care center directors and family day care providers were surveyed concerning play opportunities in their programs. Three areas were considered: the physical environment, the importance of play in the program, and peer interaction patterns. Participants included 177 family day care providers and directors from 148 full-day care centers with 243…

This 30 to 40 minute drama for secondary school students takes place in the Pennsylvania State House, Philadelphia, on September 17, 1787, the day the Constitutional Convention ended. James Madison serves as the drama's spokesman. The drama focuses on five major points: (1) the Colonial Confederation's situation at that time, which necessitated…

As one phase of an extensive research project, normative data on the anatomical doll play of 209 nonreferred 2- through 5-year-old children were collected which revealed extreme, non-normative responses among some 4- and 5-year-olds. Later, a follow-up study was conducted to investigate the consistency of non-normative behavior over time and to…

A kindergarten teacher implemented and evaluated a practicum intervention designed to develop positive attitudes among 122 parents concerning their children's learning through play in developmental kindergarten and pre-first grade programs. Teachers reported that parents did not appreciate the benefits of learning through play, and preferred…

A resource and activity guide for the developmentally disabled that focuses on functional and constructive play is presented. Some basic ideas for fostering dramatic play among the severely developmentally disabled are also introduced. In following a developmental approach, this guide identifies goals and objectives, and explains the relevance of…

Numerous physical, mental, and behavioral activities that parents and their 3- to 5-year-old children can enjoy together are suggested in this activity guidebook. The guide suggests ways parents can give their children a good start at developing the abilities and ideas that are fundamental to all future learning at home before the children begin…

This booklet outlines what it is like to grow up as a child in Finland, and explains how Finnish society is looking after the new generation. The depiction begins with the birth of a child to a Finnish family, and progresses through sections describing the family as the basic unit of society, health programs, child health clinics, pediatrics in…

A classroom-oriented therapeutic program was devised for four pragmatically impaired preschoolers who showed little spontaneous language use within the classroom. Intervention strategies focused on facilitating interactions during free play and were based on four principles for practitioners: be child-oriented; engineer the environment; use…

Home movies of eight normal children and eight children later diagnosed as autistic were analyzed based on: (1) Piagetian criteria of sensorimotor development and semiotic functioning, and (2) developmental levels of action competencies. The age range covered was 4 to 42 months of age. The analysis showed that, from the second year of life, timing…

Examined were the cognitive and social play behaviors of hearing impaired kindergarten children. Relations probed included those between: (1) children's social and cognitive play and sign-based or oral-aural-based classroom instruction; (2) children's overall efforts to communicate and type of class instruction; and (3) the quality of children's…

Introduced by a parable on the value of children's play, this guidebook includes a list of 10 developmental functions of play, a discussion of matters for consideration in selecting and organizing equipment and facilities for early childhood programs, and a description of indoor and outdoor program resources for children's activities. Various…

The first, theoretical section of this investigation of the dramatic process examines the function of imagination and spontaneity. This section notes that the imaginative process occurs in the preconscious and need not be limited by the external world or by memory and suggests that spontaneity, like imagination, is an intuitive response dependent…