Assessed helplessness behaviors in five- to seven-year-old children of mothers with and without depression. Found that, although mothers with depression set a more negative affective tone than mothers without depression during mother-child puzzle tasks, there were few significant differences between the two groups of mothers and children. (MDM)

Presents a crossword puzzle and a word find puzzle. Offers clues dealing with member nations in the British Commonwealth. Includes an answer key for the crossword puzzle. Suggests sources of information on the Commonwealth. (DK)

Presents suggestions for organizing instructional materials in child care centers, suggesting categories for organizing children's and staff's books and ways to organize and label children's puzzles. Suggests that organizing and labeling materials will assist in identifying material needs. Recommends that the organizational system have someone in…

Compares the inference and backtracking approaches to solving logic puzzles in computer environments. (Author/ASK)

Addresses the movement called civic nationalism in Quebec Province (Canada) that allows all people regardless of ethnic heritage to participate fully in the secular and governmental life of Canada. Provides a puzzle that focuses on the people uniting against civic nationalism. Included the clues and word list. (CMK)

States that puzzles are an important tool in helping children engage in the problem-solving process. Claims that children are interested in puzzles because they can be active as observers, problem solvers, and learners, with little or no assistance from adults and others. Defines nine characteristics of good puzzle-making situations. (MOK)

Describes the du Maurier Open, a women's tennis tournament. Explains that tennis becomes an elite sport at the level of the du Maurier Open. Presents a crossword puzzle that focuses on many of the female tennis stars and provides the across and down clues, a word list, and the answer key. (CMK)

States that toys can be used in the social studies classroom to help elementary students learn and retain relevant content. Discusses how to incorporate toys into the classroom. Lists toys, games, and lesson plan ideas that can be used when teaching history, geography, and economics. (CMK)

Discusses the influences socialist ideas have had upon Canada and its people, in particular, their system of governmental control over medical facilities and services. Provides a crossword puzzle that focuses on the prominent Canadian socialist leaders of the twentieth-century. Includes the clues and word list. (CMK)

Establishing schooling/larger world connections is critical for adolescents. The contextual learning approach views learning as most effective when information is presented within a familiar framework. Employing puzzles, hands-on learning activities, project-based learning, contextual connections, applied math, mentoring, and wider audiences…

Presents mathematics activities on tangrams to study geometrical shapes such as polygons, symmetrical shapes, and tangram jigsaws. (ASK)

Visual logic puzzles provide a fertile environment for teaching multiple topics in discrete mathematics. Many puzzles can be solved by the repeated application of a small, finite set of strategies. Explicitly reasoning from a strategy to a new puzzle state illustrates theorems, proofs, and logic principles. These provide valuable, concrete…

Background: Genetic disorders predispose individuals to exhibit characteristic behaviours, which in turn elicit particular behaviours from others. In response to the strength of Prader?Willi syndrome (PWS) and weakness of Williams syndrome (WS) in visual-spatial tasks such as jigsaw puzzles, parents' behaviours can be affected by their child's…

This book is designed to provide middle-grade mathematics teachers with ideas for enlivening instruction to help students acquire a sense about numbers. Guided classroom discussions for writing opportunities centered on the theme of problem solving are provided. Following an introduction, chapters include the following: Counterintuitive Problems;…

This issue of "The Goldfinch," an Iowa history magazine for children, focuses on issues relating to housing. Articles address such subjects as homelessness, neighborhood history, architecture, and local folklore. One student activity is the "Building Blocks" game that calls upon students to fill in blanks to complete words from…