Young children learn best through hands-on, authentic experiences that motivates, stimulates and supports their growth in all areas of development. This includes the skills necessary to enhance their literacy and language acquisition, physical and cognitive development in addition to their social-emotional development and approaches to learning.…

Playgroups are a unique form of early childhood provision involving parents and their children attending together. Parents' attendance at playgroups provides opportunities for involvement in play. However, little is known about parents' practices of co-play in playgroups and the potential for these practices to enhance children's play experiences…

The author uses a dialogical autoethnographic approach informed by symbolic interactionist theory to examine the role of toys, play, and parenting decisions on his childhood development and adult opportunities and interests. He examines how self, others, social contexts, and objects, particularly toys and adult analogues for those toys, came…

It is important for assessments used by occupational therapists to have documented evidence of their validity. This adds to the knowledge about what specific factors assessments measure and inform their utility for use in clinical practice by occupational therapists. The convergent validity between the Children's Assessment of Participation and…

Purpose: This study aims to explore young children's information practices within the context of their individual interests, examining children's interest-related information activities, challenges encountered and enablers received. Design/methodology/approach: Participants included 18 children between five and seven years of age and their…

In this paper, early childhood teacher educators describe their work to provide opportunities for pre-service teacher candidates to engage in specific practices that facilitate reflection and planning related to enhancing toddlers' engagement during free play. The practices targeted were structured by the instructor and supported by the mentor…

Children's food preferences are strongly associated with their consumption patterns. Children tend to choose foods with which they are familiar. It is proposed that the earlier and broader the experience with food, the healthier the child's or adult´s diet. In a focus group we developed a toolkit consisting of a training course for kindergarten…

The effective integration of educational technologies into early childhood education remains a significant challenge. An important element of this challenge is how practitioner beliefs about pedagogy relate to how digital technologies are used in the early years classroom. Focussing on early childhood practitioner beliefs in relation to pedagogy…

Play-based learning is of growing interest in many English-medium primary schools throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. I share my insights from researching play as learning, and supporting teachers with curriculum design and pedagogy in play-based contexts. Although play is a slippery concept and its value often underestimated, the evidence of the…

In this paper, I study the narrative structure of comics as a means to describe the ways that indeterminate modes of representation can allow the reader to imagine that which in childhood can never be fully expressed. Analyzing a number of panels from Gilbert Hernandez's graphic novel, "Marble Season," I describe a conceptual link…

Farm- and nature-based early childhood education programs have a unique potential to provide young children with skills and experiences that build a strong foundation for future learning and environmental stewardship, but can also to extend positive impacts to families. In this paper, we work to bridge the gap between research and practice by…

This article describes how American and Japanese kindergartners see play and what teachers can learn from them. The authors share their findings from analyzing photos and interviews from 44 American children in the southeastern United States and 55 Japanese children in the main island of Japan, all aged five to six years. In the study, children…

The following article aims to present, from children's perspectives, the value of literacy and how they use it in their everyday lives. Through the use of ethnographic methodology, including observations, interviews and collection of artifacts, it seeks to examine how children rely on their literacy skills authentically, as they play and move…

The article seeks to explore the relationship between the researcher and children aged from one to three years old. The findings are drawn from a research project in an Icelandic preschool where video recordings were used as the main method. The aim of the research project was to understand children's lived experiences when creating their…

Children's interests are widely recognised as pivotal to meaningful learning and play in the early years. However, less is known about how children's diverse interests may contribute to relationships and interactions within peer cultures. This article builds upon previous studies to argue that participation in sociocultural activity generates…