An electric preschool is a classroom or center for children 3 to 5 years of age in which the curriculum with its supportive activities, materials, and equipment depends more on technology that is powered by electricity than on manually operated objects. Certainly, preschoolers need stimulating and safe environments managed by adults who allow them…

This study demonstrates that symbolic play has merit as a curricular tool for early literacy development. Naturalistic observation of four prekindergarten teachers and their classes revealed ways in which teachers can facilitate early literacy development by functioning as participants within the context of young children's spontaneous symbolic…

A total of 103 preschool children of lower and middle socioeconomic status families were observed in three preschool programs during 15 standardized free play periods for the purpose of investigating preschool children's preferences for different types of traditionally used play materials. The influence of age, sex, and socioeconomic status (SES)…

The connections among language learning, language education, and children's wordplay are explored in this book. Each chapter examines some aspect of the interrelations between wordplay activities and the goals of language education. The book is divided into three sections, with the first section exploring wordplay and language learning in the…

The study, which investigated the influence of teacher behavior on the social participation of 4-year-old preschool children, was conducted in three phases: pretraining, training, and post-training. In the first phase, four preschool teachers were observed for approximately 30 minutes, 3 days a week, for a 2 week period during free play sessions…

The sex role choices of preschool children were observed for two years in a free play situation to determine what the consequences of such choices are for the types of play chosen and for social behaviors. The sex role factor was plotted on four quadrants: Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Androgynous and Low on both M and F (LMF). The children who…

This booklet, directed to parents, advocates parent involvement in New Zealand playcenter groups, discusses parental duties in the playcenter, and suggests ways parents can help children to learn. The booklet has three chapters. Chapter I discusses the value of parent involvement from the point of view of the child, the parent, and the community.…

A good playground stimulates a child by offering a variety of interesting, challenging, and rewarding activities. Children learn from play and what they learn can be controlled by careful design of playgrounds. Topics discussed include theories of equipment; design; playground planning and concern for the needs of children, parents, and community;…

The Demonstration Nursery Center for Infants and Toddlers was established in 1967 to create a quality day care program that could be replicated elsewhere, to define the components of quality care for infants and to help the State of North Carolina develop standards for infant care. The Center models itself on a well-functioning home environment…

This report includes a discussion of five separate research studies which were conducted in preschool programs in Ontario, California during the year 1967-68. The first study includes only five children from Ontario in a larger project which attempted to assess young children's recognition of skin color differences. The second study was conducted…

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and the Canadian Mothercraft Society completed the first year of their 3-year day care demonstration project for advantaged and disadvantaged infants from 3 to 30 months of age. The program was designed to facilitate infants' cognitive, personality, and social development through personalized…

A dissertation proposal involved a study to observe spontaneous behavior of children in interaction with materials in order to gain understanding of the factors that influence classificatory and imaginative behavior in free play. Children at two levels of ability in terms of classification skills were observed in interaction with materials at two…

Preschool equipment designed for use in rooms and facilities that are also used for other purposes is described and specifications given. The equipment is portable, inexpensive to make, provides its own storage, adds color to the room, and is durable. Detailed plans and pictures are given for an easel, water table, work bench, appliances in a…

This study analyzed the effect of (1) teacher priming and (2) the presence of novel gross motor play equipment on peer interaction. The subject was a 2 1/2-year-old boy who seldom interacted with his classmates in a toddler class. In the teacher priming condition, teachers verbally and nonverbally prompted the subject to interact with peers, while…

Symbolic nonimitative play, fantasy play, and functional play all have a place in the nursery school. This point is illustrated by a description of what happened when children in several French nursery school classes were presented with figurines modeled after cartoon characters of an American television show. (NH)