Socio-dramatic play is an everyday occurrence in early childhood education as children create narratives together in shared imagined worlds. The teacher's role in this type of play is less clear and this paper draws on a study using Lindqvist's "playworlds" approach to gain insight into how teachers participate in children's play. In…

Playing is an activity that affects significantly the psychological development and learning in preschool age. Opinions among researchers and practitioners are divided about adults' role in children's play. Despite being a children's activity, high-level, complex social play hardly appears without adult mediation. According to the narrative play…

Ambivalence is a relatively little advanced concept for studying young people's engagement in education. We present a case study in which a teacher of a kindergarten-first-grade classroom works within an activity called a "playworld" to engage a child who had been excluded from certain classroom practices, after having been perceived by…

This article describes the introduction of creative movement activity in three Hong Kong kindergartens to promote children's creativity. The purposes of the study were to examine the effectiveness of creative movement activity in promoting children's creativity and teachers' perceptions of the activities. The movement activities were designed…

This study explores a teacher's understandings of the role of play and her use of play in literacy learning serving children from diverse language backgrounds. The participants in this study were a public pre-kindergarten teacher and her class. Data were collected from interviews, informal conversations, observations, and self-reflexive notes. The…

This article explores the process by which different elements of the material culture of educational settings, including learning tools, classroom design and other aspects of the physical environment that embody a particular educational philosophy, become transmuted when taken over by those with very different pedagogical aims. The article focuses…

A 2-year experiment with Hungarian kindergarteners concluded that handicraft activity which evolved out of play experiences had the most positive effects on different kinds of children. (JF)

Discusses a national trend toward overtesting and isolated skills testing of young children, an approach growing out of behavioral programs for the handicapped. Advocates treating all children as gifted and providing them with activities encouraging curiosity, creativity, independence, sensitivity, and self-expression. Includes nine references.…

The kindergarten year is quite unlike preschool and not like first grade, either. What should teaching practice look like for this critical year? This book offers a vivid picture of kindergarten children, perceptive discussion of the current kindergarten context and policy issues, and clear guidelines for teaching and assessing kindergartners.…

A successful bilingual kindergarten program has to utilize fully the results of three areas of modern research and development: linguistics, psychology, and education. The preparation and implementation of curricular materials for teaching in Navajo and English to five-year-old Navajo children requires an understanding of at least the following…

The High/Scope Curriculum is a developmentally based approach to early childhood education. The curriculum's "Extensions" newsletter, in which the articles in this collection first appeared, informs curriculum users about new development, relating to the High/Scope "open framework" curriculum. This collection divides the…

Located in 26 counties, the Florida Migratory Child Compensatory Program enrolls preschool children ages three, four, and five. Since many of these children travel with their parents from county to county, a need for a consistent curriculum emphasis developed. Therefore, using the National Migrant Goals, the Florida Migrant Early Childhood…