Around the world, on every continent, and in every country, children play. Though culturally contextualized, play is a global common childhood experience. There are cultural variations in children's play activities, and though play looks and sounds different across the world, there are also commonalities. Though scholars find it difficult to…

"Effective Practices in Early Childhood Education" is designed to empower a new generation of teachers who can make a difference in children's lives. It covers both how to teach, and what to teach, young children from birth through age 8. An entire chapter introduces developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) for early childhood…

With young children, there is often an instructional focus on naturalistic interactions between the child and environment. In special education, there are times when direct instruction (di) and discrete trial training (DTT) are both needed, requiring a balance of explicit DTT and child-initiated instruction. This article discusses what…

Spatial ability is a form of intelligence where a person demonstrates the capacity to mentally generate, transform, and rotate a visual image and thus understand and recall spatial relationships between real and imagined objects. The aim of this paper is three-fold: (1) to review related empirical studies on spatial abilities for young children…

Background: Children's holistic development includes physical, cognitive, socio-emotional, moral and affective development and lies in early childhood development education (ECDE). According to research, children learn through different age-appropriate teaching and learning pedagogies. Therefore, the importance of implementing a play-based…

This article introduces a sequence of movement tasks to teach one-handed sidearm striking with a short implement to preK- to second-grade children. Although one-handed sidearm striking is a complex skill, learning this skill during early childhood would expand future opportunities for children to engage in various lifetime physical activities.

Kay Baker offers a look at the needs and manifestations (observed characteristics) of the developing human being, specifically of the second-plane child. She outlines key ideas in thinking about these needs and manifestations and discerns the pedagogy associated with each. She emphasizes that the pedagogy/practice must meet the needs of the child.…

Guided looking, even done informally, has a huge impact on early childhood preparation for elementary school and is an effective way to address learning inequities. Why, therefore, does it play such a small role in schooling'? This is a question that occupied Philip Yenawine during his long career working in art museums, where the adults, once…

Peace education has been offered to children for decades, but those curricula have been only minimally guided by children's developmental stages and needs. In this article, the authors apply their research on children's developmental understanding of peace along with peace education principles and Vygotsky's sociocultural theory to present…

This comprehensive text gives pre-service early childhood educators a balanced, accessible introduction to early childhood education that also covers the content areas. It shows readers how to teach and care for children by identifying and focusing on five essential elements: understanding child development, play, guidance, working with families,…

Children's books must primarily be appropriate for children so that they could be a significant stimulus in children's lives. In other words, it is essential that the concepts child reality, literary criteria and artist sensitivity be reflected in books in order to create children's books. From birth to age 6, the fact that children's books are…

Learning gardens can provide dynamic learning and developmental experiences for young children. This case study of 12 early childhood teachers explores how teachers describe (1) learning across numerous school readiness domains and (2) how to support this learning by promoting opportunities for autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Participants…

This research evaluated the effectiveness of training and educating preservice teachers to understand and implement developmentally appropriate practices for children birth to age 5. Data from 803 participants were collected over a 3-year period at a university with a laboratory child care program associated with an undergraduate degree in child…

Young children have the capability of making decisions, informed choices, and self-assessing their progress on their choices. In this classroom of 4- and 5-year-olds, children used pictorial contracts, rubrics, and various self-assessment techniques as a method for continuous learning. Gathering and reflecting on their own evidence about their…

Many early childhood assessment practices involve table top testing that requires young children to behave like an adult (e.g., follow adult directives, attend to task, and answer questions). Research and professional policy standards have identified and mandated alternatives. Authentic assessment is the alternative to conventional testing…