Why encourage children to play board games? In the increasing disconnect of our digital lives, playing games provides a way to connect and relate with others on a human level. Strategy and role-playing games provide intellectual challenges and stretch creativity to keep the gifted mind engaged in solving problems. At the same time, the players…

When children play, they often create a mess, but what a beautiful mess it is! "Creating a Beautiful Mess" describes the ten most important play experiences all children enjoy and how these experiences support learning, creativity, and social connections. These broad categories of play include building with blocks, pretending and make…

The experiences of children's play have a profound impact on all areas of their growth and development. Memories of play can be vivid and detailed. These memories often have a treasured place in our hearts and minds. Educators and parents have a special opportunity to ask themselves, "What kind of memories of play do I hope for the children…

iPads, iPhones, Notebooks, X-Boxes, PlayStations, Televisions, Computers. They've found their way into every corner of our lives. Add to that, the pressures of the modern education with standardized tests and crowded classrooms, and it seems that our children have lost the simplicity of childhood. Are our children losing their imagination, too?…

This revised Early Learning Framework is the culmination of a collaborative process that included early childhood educators, primary teachers, academics, Indigenous organizations, Elders, government, and other professionals. The first Early Learning Framework published in 2008 changed the landscape of early years practice in British Columbia. It…

Infants and toddlers encounter numerous spoken story experiences early in their lives: conversations, oral stories, and language games such as songs and rhymes. Many adults are even surprised to learn that children this young need these kinds of natural language experiences at all. Adults help very young children take a step along the path toward…

In this book, the author reveals the creative force of children's narrative imagination and shows how this develops through childhood. He provides a new and powerful understanding of the significance of narrative for children's intellectual growth and for learning and teaching. The book explores a series of real stories written by children between…

Penetrates educational rallying symbols and technological paradigms to celebrate Donald Schon's reflection-in-action approach to teaching. Advances an alternative, nonpartisan vision of American Education that fulfills promises, opens spaces for inquiry and dialog, and overcomes a spreading passivity. Affirms freedom, imagination, passion, and the…

Television can be a source of knowledge and information or it can cause negative behavior. Parents can help their children understand the difference between fantasy and reality on television and help make television viewing a positive event. (DF)

This special section on the spirit of play discusses (1) characteristics of adult play; (2) styles of playfulness; (3) the creation of environments that foster children's sense of wonder; and (4) strategies for training teachers to be playful and to be attentive to children's play. (HOD)

The rapid, disjointed, and vivid style of Sesame Street may impede rather than promote progress toward literacy and the development of voluntary attention. It robs children of the ability to create mental pictures. Contends that it is a failure as an instructional medium. (DM)

The "Everyday Learning" series has been developed to focus attention on the everyday ways in which children can be supported in their growth and development. It is for all those who are involved in children's development and learning, including people caring for young children in their own or others' homes, such as parents, grandparents…

This paper, three of four on literature and the young child, investigates two more ways that a parent's simple act of reading to a child during his or her early years helps him or her grow into a successful reader, namely: reading to the child will help him or her broaden the range of experiences; and reading to the child will help him or her…

Noting that parents need to recognize that fears are a normal part of a child's development and that a child must be helped to deal with them, this book provides a very practical approach to fear reduction in a user-friendly form. The first part of the book, for parents, discusses: (1) definitions of fear and fear symptoms in children; (2) the…

This booklet provides parents with practical ways to introduce their children to the arts with the continuous message to encourage children to imagine. This book revises and updates the earlier publication "Three Rs for the '90s." Following the foreword by Robert Coles and an introduction by Jane Alexander, the chapters include: (1) "Dance and…