Promoting positive gender development

by Zlata Stankovic-Ramirez and Brigitte Vittrup
While Ms. Joan is handing out LEGO^® bricks to her preschool class for a spatial reasoning activity, 4-year-old Thomas exclaims, “Ooh, can I have the pink blocks? Pink is my favorite color.” > Read

Teaching children personal hygiene

by Barbara Langham
Where do we learn personal hygiene—habits of cleanliness and health? At home certainly, when parents teach us as children to bathe, brush our teeth, and wash our hands. > Read

Infant games for building cognitive skills

Infant play activities and games are essential tools for building cognitive skills. As babies grow and learn, mastering several developmental tasks or challenges reflects the enormous changes going on in their brains. Social interactions with attentive, responsive teachers and caregivers... > Read

Teaching children kindness—through animals

When Ms. Sanders walks into her classroom one morning, she discovers that the class hamster has escaped—again. “Oh, no,” she thinks. “Someone must not have closed the cage properly. Now we’ll have to look for it, and that means delaying the unit on planning our spring garden.” > Read

Sensory overload: Quieting the noise in early childhood classrooms

by Louise Parks
Amanda Price teaches toddlers in a small preschool program. On a typical day she is at work by 7 a.m., greets children by 7:05, and settles the day’s first disagreement between two children... > Read