This articles provides a list of ideas for fun fundraising. Ideas include the following activities: putting together a spelling bee; holding a "pajama day"; "Taking frustration out on a balloon" activity; selling "finals week care packages for college students"; and selling "'goblin' insurance" activity (group offers services cleaning up after…

On April 21, 2004, the Joe L. Frost Children's Play and Play Environments Research Collection was dedicated at the J.E. and L.E. Mabee Library at the University of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio, Texas. This brief article describes the collection and Frost's plans for the future.

It seems evident why Americans have so embraced the notion of self-esteem. On the one hand, an overriding cultural value has been placed on the development of the individual, who emerges all too often as just another material commodity. On the other hand, everything about a distraction/entertainment-driven culture is about feeling good, putting…

What is play? Many researchers have made numerous attempts to discover what play really is. In order to answer the question, a working definition of play must be found. If children learn through play, then it is of utmost importance that parents, children's first teachers, provide opportunities for play at home. Furthermore, parents need to…

This column summarizes resources relating to the mentoring of beginning teachers by more experienced teachers, including resources from the ERIC database, published books, and resources from selected Web sites. As noted in the Spring 2004 issue of this journal, this column has changed from the "ERIC/EECE Report" to the "ECAP Report," with the…

Major obstacles threaten the future of Ethiopia. Global publicity regarding the drought of 1986 has left the world with images of starving and orphaned Ethiopian children. Such conditions do still exist in parts of this nation, in which 45 percent of the population falls below the national poverty line (The World Factbook, 2003). In a nation of…

Ongoing changes in the Polish political and economic sectors have led to tremendous changes in its education and health care systems that will likely bring reforms in the care of orphaned children. After the Second World War, many children in Poland were orphaned and an institutional system for their care and education became entrenched. Many…

In America, as elsewhere in the developing world, education is viewed as the most prominent public policy issue, involving an interplay of national budget allocation and foreign assistance. In Kenya, education is considered the pillar of all development activities (Odiwour, 2000). The guiding philosophy for Kenya's education is the belief that…

Inclusion, as a value, supports the right of all children, regardless of abilities, to participate actively in natural settings within their communities. Natural settings are those in which the child would spend time had he or she not had a disability. These settings include, but are not limited to, home, preschool, nursery schools, Head Start…

The experience of loss can place children and young people in a vulnerable position as it affects their development and overall emotional and social wellbeing. The experience of loss can markedly influence young people's perceptions of themselves and their world. They may not trust the predictability of events, their self-image may be damaged,…

In this article, the authors discuss the importance of education policies that aim at diminishing social disparities in poor countries, focusing on a program in higher education developed in the state of Rondonia in the Brazilian Amazon. Rondonia is a region in which people have suffered deeply from the consequences of social inequalities. Many…

Antarctica gathered in Ruschlikon, Switzerland, at the International Symposium on Early Childhood Education and Care for the 21st Century. The symposium's mission was to craft guidelines for programs that serve children under the age of formal schooling in countries throughout the world. After extensive discussions about what constitutes universal…

Codes of ethics are one of the important hallmarks of a profession. Along with prolonged training, specialized knowledge, and rites of passage, a code is one of the criteria that sets professionals apart from other workers (Katz & Ward, 1991). Literature describing the current focus on ethics in the workplace invariably describes codes addressing…

With the constant reminders of wars and other human degradation going on in the world, education for "caring" is more critically important than ever to our future (Noddings, 2002). Televised accounts of the war in Iraq leave most caring people devastated. Civilian and military deaths and casualties challenge people's faith in a peaceful and…

Students in the United States do not read well enough (Showers, Joyce, Scanlon, & Schnaubelt, 1998). While the National Assessment of Educational Progress (2003) reports an encouraging upswing in 8th-grade students' reading performance from 1992 to 2003, this fact does not stem the tide of practical concerns voiced by teachers and community…