This narrative details the responses of children and adults to a story about young children welcoming a boy with severe disabilities into their own story telling and re-enactment. Linking the act of story telling to the practice of the Hasidim, who would teach people to think about goodness by telling stories about holy men performing good works,…

Describes an instructional approach that encourages teachers to guide children in narrating stories based on actual or imagined experiences, particularly those that transpire in the classroom. Discusses ways of incorporating events from dramatic play and everyday occurrences into storytelling activities and offers a story sampler that exemplifies…

In this study, built upon a Vygotskian perspective, play is considered an optimal context for young children's literacy learning. The study sought to gain more understanding of the process of collaboration, or assisted learning, in order to promote literacy learning within the context of young children's social pretend play. Subjects were seven…

Written for the wide range of practitioners working with young children, this book offers guidance on both the theory and the practical management of drama in the early years. The book emphasizes the relationship between pretend play and the cognitive and affective development of young children, and highlights children's need to experience quality…

Seventeen children who had been removed from deleterious family backgrounds and placed in institutional care were exposed to imaginative play training. They showed significant increments in levels of imaginative play, positive emotionality, prosocial behaviors, and in measures of divergent thinking and story-telling skills, and decreases in levels…