Forest School in England is the practice of young children playing outside, rooted in the outdoor kindergartens of Scandinavia and more especially Denmark. Using observation and semi-structured interviews with children and adults in two settings, this case study approach allowed an in-depth look at where, how and what children played in a Forest…

This paper focuses on children's perspective on their outdoor play environment. The research took place in settings with designated disadvantaged status--in the backyards of Przedmiescie Olawskie--a small district of a large city of Wroclaw, Poland. The research aimed to reveal dimensions of children's perception and understanding of studied…

The ideal period for implementing environmental education or education for sustainability is during the early childhood years. The educational context of playgroups can be a platform for both children and their parents to learn together and together engage in early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS), however there is a paucity of…

Despite the proliferation of play-based and arts-informed research, an under-explored area is using both with young immigrant children to hear from them about their distinctive experiences and complexities. This paper draws on an arts-informed and play-based case study with two young immigrant children in Canada to highlight specific data…

In this article, the author introduces a series of socially engaged practices conducted between April 2019 and August 2020. In this project, titled "Project Superhero," children made meaning and projected their wishes through pretend play as superheroes. Their superhero gadgets were semiotic resources helping to reveal the children's…

Following a report from the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child Monitoring Group in 2017 noting that in Aotearoa New Zealand children's views were not being sought in matters regarding their school, play and feelings of safety, the Children's Commissioner conducted research with school-aged children seeking their related…

While children's rights "to" play is stated in the UNCRC, this study investigates children's rights "in" play through an analysis of narrative play in preschool. Play-responsive early childhood education and care (PRECEC) is a recently developed theory that provides analytical tools for investigating participants' communicative…

This research was carried out with the aim of revealing the relationship between preschool children's biophilia (BF: innate tendency to connect with nature) levels and psychological resilience (PR) in the context of age and gender variables. The sample of the study consists of 202 children aged between 48-72 months selected from preschool…

This article focuses on how children, independent of abilities, create healthy identities and spaces in kindergarten, and is based on a qualitative CGT-study carried out in Norwegian Kindergartens. Data sources include Life-form interviews with 24 children, with and without disabilities. Children placed health in the context of their daily-life…

School-age educare centres in Sweden have previously not engaged in teaching guided by objectives, but since 2016 there has been a legal requirement to do so as part of an assignment to complement the knowledge requirements in school. Through focus group discussions with children and school-age educare teachers this study explores "how"…

Participatory, rights-based methodologies in childhood studies have explored conditions that realise children's rights to participation. One avenue of investigation has been to explore assent procedures that respect children's rights to make informed decisions about participation. Less attention has been directed towards the ways in which children…

Outdoor play provides children with unique opportunities to explore and expand their worlds, and to incorporate risk and challenge into play events. However, international research indicates that children are being exposed to fewer opportunities to engage in outdoor, risky play, while few studies have explored risky play among children aged…

From a child-centered perspective, this article explores the practices of children's self-organized play-communities in institutional everyday life in Danish early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings, based on a phenomenological non-participant-observational study with a duration of 16 months involving two kindergartens (Bernstorff,…

How children experience the major transition from pre-school to compulsory schooling influences their immediate and future success and wellbeing. This complex process of change and adaptation is impacted by school readiness policy drivers, which prioritise children's performance and achievement. Pedagogic and curriculum progression shifts from…

The day-to-day environment surrounding the child influences its physical, social, and emotional wellbeing. The study was conducted to understand how the perception of children and their parents about the outdoor play spaces influences their outdoor participation. Face-to-face interviews with parents, a walk-along interview with children and audit…