Preschools and kindergartens will become the happiest environment for children when they adopt innovative thinking about the value of active playful learning, have only developmentally appropriate expectations, manage behavior solely with kindness, and, in general, foster healthy social-emotional development and create a joyful, positive…

Self-regulation is a critical emergent developmental competency that lays the foundation for children's later psychosocial health and academic achievement. Recent work indicates that physical activity and energetic play opportunities support children's self-regulation in the early childhood classroom. Many early childhood programs offer…

Research demonstrates young children with autism and other developmental disabilities can benefit from participation in play activities with peers. Play provides opportunities to increase social skills across developmental domains in an integrated manner and provides opportunities to develop a sense of belonging and friendship; these goals…

During early childhood, practitioners and family members are often tasked with determining optimal approaches to support social skill development in young children with developmental disabilities in inclusive and self-contained settings. Eight different evidence based approaches are highlighted (social narratives, scripting, pivotal response…

Video-based intervention (VBI) has strong evidence supporting efficiency in teaching social, communication, functional, behavior, play, and self-help skills and emerging evidence for teaching academic skills to students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). VBI allows opportunities to electronically provide personalized, consistent, and prerecorded…

Four children with autism were taught play skills through the use of video modeling. Video instruction was used to model play and appropriate language through a developmental sequence of play levels integrated with language techniques. Results showed that children with autism could successfully use video modeling to learn how to play appropriately…

The purpose of this paper is to describe effective methods of developing pretend play that is intrinsically motivating for young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using the topic of circumscribed interests. Children with ASD often develop very specialized interests, known as Circumscribed Interests (CI). However, their limited and…

Writing is a critical emergent literacy skill that lays the foundation for children's later literacy skills and reading achievement. Recent work indicates that many early childhood programs offer children materials and tools for engaging in writing activities but teachers rarely are seen modeling writing for children or scaffolding children's…

The paper, part of videotape presentation, highlights certain issues involved in a modeling approach to educational therapy for hearing impaired infants and their parents at the Lexington School for the Deaf (Jackson Heights, New York). Through the use of play and modeling techniques, the educational therapist encourages parents to interact and…

Raises concerns about whether literacy-enriched play in early childhood settings is really play. Presents a vignette to illustrate how a teacher can model literacy unobtrusively, thereby enhancing literacy, but unwittingly draw children away from meaningful play activities. Differentiates the cognitive processes involved in play and literacy…