The quality of the verbal environment sets the stage for young children's developing perceptions of themselves and others. This document provides hands-on, practical advice for practitioners to support children's self-perception and coping skills by establishing and maintaining a positive verbal environment. Positive verbal environments enhance…

Kindergarten has changed significantly in the last two decades: children now spend more time being taught and tested on literacy and math skills than they do learning through play and exploration, exercising their bodies, and using their imaginations. Many kindergartens use highly prescriptive curricula geared to new state standards and linked to…

Parents and professionals working with children with disabilities are urged to be alert to discrepancies between a child's usual behavior and capabilities and those exhibited during a formal testing or evaluation session. (DB)

Advocates a social relationship approach as the most appropriate way for teaching social studies to 5-year-old children. (Author/MP)

Computer drawing programs have several characteristics that make them appropriate for use in early childhood education. Drawing at the computer is an activity that captures and holds children's attention. Children at all developmental levels of graphic ability can draw at the computer, and their products can be stored in a disc or printed for…

The current trend of hurrying a child's development, as evidenced by the popularity of disposable pants for toilet training, is criticized. The pants frustrate both parents and children and, it is concluded, serve no useful purpose in the toilet-learning process. (LB)

Describes the sequential development of art in young children. Suggests teaching methods for working with children in various art activities at several developmental stages. (Author/RH)

Describes public library policies and restrictions on children's library usage, which may include requirements such as name-writing performance tests or enrollment in first grade to qualify for a library card. Such policies are criticized as discriminatory. (MES)

Seven functional uses of anatomical dolls in sexual abuse evaluations of young children are identified: comforter, icebreaker, anatomical model, demonstration aid, memory stimulus, diagnostic screen, and diagnostic test. The relevancy of criticisms is shown to vary greatly by doll use. The continued, informed use of anatomical dolls in sexual…

This article addresses the unique assessment needs of young blind children and discourages dependence on standardized tests for this population. Principles of one assessment approach (involving observation; clinical examination of mobility, language, play, socioemotional development, and academic skills; and interviews with mother and social…

Reports an interview with two teachers who provide instruction in sign language to 3- to 6-year-old children attending the Otter Creek School in Vermont. Children at the school use sign language while singing and to converse at snack times. (Author/RH)

Described is the Pillsbury Foundation School, designed to discover how creative music activity was provoked and generated in children, ages three to six, and how natural musicality could be developed in these young children. The author warns against repressing the deeply rooted natural musicality that young children inherit. (KC)

Discusses the 'wasted time' dilemma and its effects on children in day-care centers. 'Wasted time' refers to small, seemingly insignificant incidents of waiting between activities which add up to more than an hour of boredom for children during an eight-hour day. (CM)

Preschool children can benefit by working with microcomputers. Thinking skills are enhanced by software games that focus on logic, memory, problem solving, and pattern recognition. Counting, sequencing, and matching games develop mathematics skills, and word games focusing on basic letter symbol and word recognition develop language skills.…

This essay discusses 13 pictorial devices with which one must be familiar to understand the illustrations in Virginia Lee Burton's "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel." Color constancy, implied background, sharply drawn lines, abstractions of caricature, use of perspective, face on objects, and picture book narration are noted. (EJS)