Young children suffer when schools make inappropriate academic demands, which create anxious and demoralized young learners who feel disinvested in the learning process. Students' mental and physical health suffer from the stress of academically driven environments, and they lose the opportunity to gain the skills that creative play generates.…

A secret sauce for family and community engagement emerged as a result of a technical assistance project that supported Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership grantees in California. Power-sharing, communication, creativity, and continuous recommitment to families were key ingredients of that sauce. When these were present, programs were able to…

Early intervention activities for very young disabled children are frequently linked to developmental targets and goals. A key challenge for parents and practitioners involved in early intervention programmes is to encourage their child to play and develop creatively through enjoyable, everyday childhood experiences. This paper reports on a…

This book provides 250 games and activities designed to help infants to 8-year-olds with all types of disabilities grow through play. Many activities come with special adaptations for children with physical, visual, hearing, emotional, and cognitive impairments. Each chapter focuses on a particular "world" or activity theme. Topics of individual…

"Birth to Three Matters" is essential for all those involved in developing policy and providing care and education for children between birth and three. It carefully examines the structure and content of the recently published Birth to Three Matters materials and explores a range of "matters" that impact on the development of quality in early…

This volume consists of selected refereed papers from the fourth annual conference on Australian Research in Early Childhood Education. The papers represent a cross-section of research interests in the field of early childhood education, care, and development. Differing methodologies are also featured in this issue. The papers are: (1)…