Linguistic interactions between parents and their children are frequently studied to investigate how children acquire language. From observations, researchers have identified interaction strategies that foster children's language development. In turn, interventions to support children's early language skills employ styles of interaction derived…

This study examined the distribution of language expansion in parent-child (preschool aged) mealtime conversations in 30 Chinese middle-class families. The conversations were categorised into four types: "contextualised & conflicted," "contextualised & non-conflicted," "decontextualised & conflicted," and…

This study compares the mental-state talk of infant educators in Australia and China in order to determine the nuanced differences in the ways that they use this talk with the infants in their room. Participants are 44 native English-speaking Australian educators from centres in Sydney, Australia and 30 native Chinese-speaking infant educators…

'I'm a big boy, you're a baby': How do such phrases do the vital work of managing young children's peer interactions? We trace the function of such phrases as they were used over an 18-month period by young children (2; 6-4; 11) who attended a New Zealand an early childhood centre. Using interactional sociolinguistics methods of analysis we…

We report on our analysis of talk during an assessment task where we asked children living in northern Canadian communities to draw and write about activities they share with family and friends in their daily lives. We introduce a language as context approach to assessing young children's (ages 4-6 years) literacy and sociocultural knowledge,…

The present study examined the strategies used by Greek novice readers in the initial phases of reading acquisition. Fifty (50) children were assessed at four successive testing periods throughout 1st grade of Primary School. Thus, 21 boys (42%) and 29 girls (58%) participated in this study. Their mean age at the beginning of the study was 74.43…

Acquiring observational competences is an important task in early science education. It helps children to make a transition from seeing to observing and developing scientific process skills and science concepts. Outdoor education is seen by many researchers as optimal way for learning about life sciences, therefore ongoing loss of human…

It has become increasingly clear that the early use of decomposition for addition is associated with later mathematical achievement. This study examined how younger children execute a base-10 decomposition strategy to solve complex arithmetic (e.g. two-digit addition). 24 addition problems in two modalities (WA: Written Arithmetic; OA: Oral…

Research indicates that the early years are a pivotal time for developing foundational mathematical knowledge, and that early experiences with mathematics have a lasting impact on later numeracy skills and academic achievement. However, the importance of early mathematical thinking and learning is often undervalued or overlooked in early childhood…

Research indicates that mathematical understanding before formal schooling influences later attainment. This study investigated the mathematical activities of preschool-aged children in Japan, a neglected topic despite the high mathematical attainment of Japanese children. Preschool activities were investigated using surveys, observations, and…

Following recipes, adding ingredients, creating something unique, and seeing the finished products are the cooking processes that children can get actively involved with. This paper presents a quantitative study exploring the effectiveness of an inquiry-based cooking project to improve children's scientific process skills and health eating habits.…

This study reports on the effectiveness of an organised set of storytelling activities that aimed to enhance early literacy development. There were three conditions in the study. In the control condition, regular literacy development activities took place. In one experimental condition, the set of activities included oral storytelling. In the…

This study examined implementation of a newly developed shared book reading intervention program, to boost infants' early skills and provide a solid foundation for continued language learning. A randomised control study was conducted to elevate the effects of Shared Book Reading Intervention with 20 parents (n = 10 experiment, n = 10 control) and…

This study investigates preschool student teachers' views on how early writing should be supported in preschool. The sample consists of 66 preschool student teachers from Finland, Norway, and Sweden, who participated in the study by responding to open-ended questions on a written questionnaire. Results show that the respondents' answers were…

This study aimed to discover the effect of physical education on the emotional and mental development of pre-schoolers. The study involved 355 pre-schoolers (162 males and 158 females) aged 4 (N = 215) and 5 (N = 150) years (mean age = 4.36, SD = 0.76) who attend public preschool institutions in Moscow, Russia. All respondents were divided into…