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The current study investigates how educational media influences the early bilingual language development of Pakistani children. An exploratory sequential research design was employed, spanning a 16-week observation period and the utilisation of a Likert-scale based questionnaire. A cohort of twenty 5-year-old children and their parents participated in the study. The findings reveal that exposure to second language (L2) culture through educational media can positively impact learning. However, the efficacy of this influence is contingent upon various factors such as media quality, frequency and duration of exposure, and cultural relevance. Furthermore, the study outlines both favourable and adverse outcomes of L2 cultural exposure on children's behaviour. Positive effects include fostering an appreciation for diverse cultures, enhancing language proficiency, and promoting cultural competence. Conversely, negative consequences encompass inappropriate behaviour and an over-reliance on screen time. The paper concludes by offering suggestions to parents and educators for mitigating negative effects. These recommendations involve monitoring screen time, introducing alternative forms of entertainment, and leveraging cartoons and nursery rhymes as tools to teach cultural diversity and encourage identity formation. Lastly, the study underscores the significance of combining the use of educational media with other language learning techniques to deliver a holistic language learning experience.

This research aims to support the "teaching of concepts" in the 3rd grade Life Science Course with activities. A quasi-experimental design (selective) with a pre-test and post-test control group, one of the quantitative research designs, was used in the research. Using songs, poems, rhymes, acrostics, stories, fairy tales, riddles/puzzles, animations, and traditional children's games, the experimental group's success in acquiring certain concepts from the third-grade life science course was enhanced by developing and implementing the above activities. Research data were collected with the "Concept Achievement Test" developed by the researcher by quantitative research data collection techniques. In the data analysis, arithmetic means were used to determine the academic success of the experimental and control groups. The Independent Sample t-Test was used for comparisons between groups. As a result of the research, there was a considerable achievement gap between the experimental and control groups, with the experimental group performing significantly better. According to these results, activities structured with songs, poems, nursery rhymes, acrostics, stories, fairy tales, puzzles/riddles, animations, and traditional children's games significantly impact student success in teaching concepts in third-grade elementary school biology classes. These activities apparently increase student success rates and are useful in this regard.

Rhyming is one of the basic skills associated with phonological awareness. This paper aims to introduce theoretical starting points and the results of research into children's rhyming in the context of phonological awareness. The text explains theoretical circumstances pertaining to the theme and defines key concepts. The main part of the paper includes the results of the research of pre-school children in Slovakia. There were 866 respondents (children) of 4 to 7 years of age. The subject of the research was the rhyming skills of children, which was tested in three independent areas: completing the rhyme in a nursery-rhyme, awareness of rhymes, and the production of rhymes.

This study aimed to determine the effects of nursery rhymes, entertaining and prominent products of Turkish folk literature, on improving reading fluency of fourth-grade primary school students. The sample consisted of 44 fourth graders, attending a public primary school in Vakfikebir County of Trabzon province (Turkey) in the 2015-2016 academic year. The sample was grouped into two, namely an experiment and a control group and the students were randomly assigned to the groups. The texts selected for the purpose of the study, were firstly read by the students and they were voice-recorded as they read out before the study was carried out. Their reading rates were measured relying on the recordings by counting the number of words they read per minute, while their reading levels were determined with Error Analysis Inventory and the prosodic features were measured using the Prosodic Reading Scale. Then, the activities involving nursery rhymes were administered to the experimental group for 15 weeks, who were offered two activities per week, while the students in the control group continued their regular education. After the administrations, the measurements were repeated asking the students to read the same texts. The reading rate scores, the accurate reading scores and the data obtained from the Prosodic Reading Scale were analyzed with SPSS, a statistical software program by performing paired samples t-test and independent groups t-test. The results showed that the reading rates and the accurate reading skills of the students in the experimental group improved. The implications of the findings are discussed and suggestions are made at the end.

Research on children's experiences with designing has emphasized cognitive processes, self-efficacy, and outcomes related to designing. However, efforts have been limited towards identifying approaches children use while designing and making decisions related to design. This study, which incorporated a qualitative analysis of children's design portfolios, explored students' decisions in planning and evaluating designs related to children's nursery rhymes. Differences in design approaches, based on teacher, task, and stage of designing, were identified in the analysis. Understanding how children approach and attempt to solve open-ended design problems may assist in improving student design experiences and pedagogical practices in all levels of education.

Oral language proficiency in kindergarten can facilitate the acquisition of reading and writing. However, in diglossic languages, like Arabic, the large gap between the spoken and the formal, modern standard (MSA) varieties of the language may restrict the benefits of oral language proficiency to subsequent literacy skills. Here, we tested, in a randomized controlled study, whether an intervention program, implemented in kindergarten, that familiarized the children with rhymes presented in MSA through recitation, facilitated reading and spelling in first grade. We also tested whether engaging the children in recitation affords an advantage over repeated listening by itself and whether rhymes directly referring to the alphabet impart additional advantages. The children were assigned to one of four intervention conditions (10 sessions, 2 months) wherein they either recited or repeatedly listened to nursery rhymes that were either related or unrelated to the alphabet, or engaged in nonlinguistic activities (control). A year later, all intervention groups read faster compared to a control group (nonlinguistic activity). The two recitation groups gained in reading accuracy, reading efficiency, and spelling; spelling gains were found also in children who only listened to alphabet-related rhymes. The reciting groups were superior to the listening groups in all study measures (reading and spelling). The results suggest long-term contributions from structured interventions based on oral rhyme repetition, in kindergarten, to reading and spelling in first grade. Vocal recitations in kindergarten can benefit the mastering of literacy skills even in a language that differs from the one spoken in the child's home.

Drawing on experiential learning and transformative learning theory, a transformative model of continuing professional development (CPD) was employed to implement symbolic gesturing in a day nursery. The model of CPD aimed to empower practitioners working with infants to have autonomy over their professional learning. Perspectives of the nursery staff about the CPD were captured in narrative semi-structured interviews pre and post the three months of implementation, and from reflective diaries used during this period. Practitioners concluded that the model was successful because it allowed them flexibility to use symbolic gesturing in a way that was navigated independently by each practitioner as part of their daily routine rather than as a specific, formal course of instruction requiring formulaic adoption. Findings also indicate that the CPD model had beneficial learning outcomes in both cognitive and affective domains for practitioners and the infants in their care. Limitations of the small-scale study are acknowledged but the study highlights implications for practice and theorising about CPD in early years settings. The model could be of interest to researchers and practitioners wishing to develop effective CPD in other nursery settings to introduce symbolic gesturing, or more generally other professional development initiatives.

As cultural diversity is increasingly celebrated in classrooms, multicultural learning in music education has become more essential and meaningful. Therefore, this article emphasizes the integration of Cantonese nursery rhymes into early childhood music classrooms by providing a detailed lesson plan and some teaching suggestions. This effort aims to enhance students' cultural awareness and knowledge of world music by integrating Chinese music elements into general music learning. It also serves to provide inspiration and suggests possibilities for music educators who wish to incorporate multicultural elements in music education.

With the advent of globalization, especially in its third phase (see Robertson, 2003), global relations of domination have undermined abuse of power at national and local levels (Fairclough, 2001). Global ELT textbooks, as corollaries of the globalization process, are not immune to the embedment of discriminatory discourses, as various studies have shown (see for example, Gray, 2010, 2012; Babaii and Sheikhi, 2017). On the other hand, a social actor analysis of verbal and visual discourse will contribute significantly to the disclosure of discriminatory discourses (see van Leeuwen, 2008; Hart, 2014). The current study, therefore, reduces the gap in research on ideology of ELT materials by probing into the nursery rhymes in children and young-adult ELT textbooks. Visual representation of social actors in the images accompanying nursery rhymes in "Magic Time", "English Time", "Let's Go" and "Family and Friends" were, thus, examined, using van Leeuwen's (2008) framework. Regarding results, the most frequent exclusionary discourses in the corpus included religion, nationality, race, and gender respectively. Significantly, it was found that monochromatic depiction of social actors constituted a strategy for the discursive construction of otherness in "Family and Friends." Additionally, a process, called "whitenization of blacks" in the terminology of the current study, was found to be at work in which blacks were depicted as having the facial features of whites.

Nursery rhymes are quite important in terms of developing children's language skills. It was observed that there is a paucity of research looking at semantic fields and value regarding nursery rhymes; therefore, this study was intended to fill that gap in the literature by investigating nursery rhymes in terms of semantic fields and value. In this study, forty-eight nursery rhymes sung were investigated, using content analysis. While, according the results of the study, semantic domains of people, animals, vehicles, body parts, clothing, toys, furniture, household items and utensils are similar to Clark's (1995) classification, number, nature, place, tool, musical instrument, material and time semantic domains were added and thus the original classification was expanded. Moreover, in fifteen out of the forty-five nursery rhymes, values were mentioned. The nursery rhymes were found to be featuring the values of punishment, mercy, industriousness, violence, robbery, loyalty, respect, love, breaking promise, cruelty to animals, lying and disloyalty. Like all texts affecting the world of children, nursery rhymes should be examined in terms of their content on whether they affect children negatively or not. [This study was presented as an oral presentation in Education and Transition. Contributions from Educational Research (ECER). 7-11 September 2015, Budapest.]

Children who are learning English as an additional language (EAL) need opportunities to learn English in playful, engaging ways. Nursery rhymes offer an effective forum to explore a wide range of vocabulary and grammar knowledge in a manner that is comprehensible to EAL pupils by using gestures, visuals, and props to support oral language development. This article explores how a pre-kindergarten teacher used nursery rhymes to teach vocabulary and grammar in her diverse early years' classroom.

A large linguistic distance exists between spoken Arabic and the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) the literary language (a diglosia). Novice readers, therefore, struggle with the complex orthography of Arabic as well as the mastering of MSA. Here, we tested whether structured activities in MSA would advance kindergarteners' MSA aptitude by the end of the school year. We examined two issues: (1) whether reciting nursery rhymes in MSA would be more effective in promoting language and preliteracy skills in kindergarteners compared to listening to the same texts; and (2) whether there are additional advantages for using texts directly referring to the alphabet. Thus, 136 kindergarteners (M[subscript age] = 5:6; 61 girls), all native speakers of Arabic and with middle-low socioeconomic background, were assigned to a 10-session (2 months) program in 1 of 4 intervention conditions wherein nursery rhymes related/not related to the alphabet, were either repeatedly recited or listened to. The achievements of children in the intervention conditions were compared to those of peers that were given nonlinguistic activity of similar length (control). The four intervention groups improved their performance at the postintervention assessment in all tests of MSA aptitude and outperformed the control group in receptive and expressive vocabulary and listening comprehension. Also, the reciting groups were better than the control and listening groups in tests assessing vocabulary and morpho-syntactic sensitivity. Our results highlight the contribution of structured interventions based on rhyme repetition to MSA proficiency of kindergarteners. Moreover, the results suggest that reciting may be superior to listening in advancing language proficiency in preschoolers.

Nursery rhymes provide a unique learning context for preschoolers in regard to their emergent literacy and musical development. According to Vygotsky's social constructivist theory (1978), in order for learning to occur, children must face challenges, and adults must provide support to guide them toward mastery of new skills. The current pilot study began with the aim of documenting teachers' reactions to nursery rhymes in relation to their level of difficulty. Eighty-eight kindergarten teachers were asked to use the new nursery rhymes in their classrooms. Then, they were asked fill out a questionnaire to document their reactions and their ratings of the linguistic and musical difficulty. Teachers' reactions were measured by their overall impression of the nursery rhymes, their perception of pupils' enjoyment of the nursery rhymes and the time they spent using these nursery rhymes in their classrooms. The results revealed that the teachers tended to have a better impression of the nursery rhymes, perceive their pupils' enjoyment of the nursery rhymes as more positive, and spend more time on those nursery rhymes judged the easiest in regard to their vocabulary and their rhythm. According to Ezell and Justice (2005), by putting more emphasis on easier nursery rhymes, teachers might target only what children have already mastered, leaving less opportunity for new emergent literacy and music skills to develop. The results point to the necessity of improving educators' training in regard to the use of nursery rhymes by focusing on the educational opportunities provided by linguistic and musical challenges in nursery rhymes, an important starting point for explicit instruction and scaffolding (Bruner, 1983).

This paper aims to investigate university students' perceptions of drama activities in terms of providing suggestions for constructing an effective drama class. A total of ten students who participated in Interactive English, an elective English course during the second semester of 2013 at a Korean university, took part in this study. The students' perceptions of the activities as written in their journals and in response to questionnaires were analyzed. The results show that the subjects perceived that (1) all the 10 activities used in the drama course improved their communication skills (2) all the 10 activities improved their confidence; (3) activities that involved Group Homework, Mantle Expert, Role Play and Nursery Rhymes enhanced students' cultural awareness of the target language; (4) awareness, competence, and thinking ability were considered effective results of a drama class. Regarding these results, it is suggested that an activity based drama course gave students the speaking opportunity to increase their confidence, the practice necessary to become self-aware, and through stories, myths and nursery rhymes, a taste of other cultures.

This article examines how broader cultural practices influence teachers teaching the Holocaust in Lithuania. This article uses the concept of the "cultural curriculum" to examine how community "stories" intersect with formal education. It finds that teachers feel they have become responsible for challenging long-standing cultural practices as well now. This is not always welcome because most are uncertain how to engage with community behaviors and preserve their place in the community at the same time.

Phonological awareness is an important precursor in learning to read. This awareness of phonemes fosters a child's ability to hear and blend sounds, encode and decode words, and to spell phonetically. This quantitative study assessed pre-K children's existing Euro-American nursery rhyme knowledge and phonological awareness literacy, provided phonological awareness training with an experimental group of children and investigated the effects of explicit nursery rhyme instruction on participants' phonemic skill levels. These data reveal that children exposed to the intervention consisting of explicit Euro-American nursery rhyme instruction significantly outperformed the children in the control group on rhyme awareness and completion statement measures. Results of this research suggest that knowledge of nursery rhymes enhances children's phonological awareness and sensitivity to individual phonemes and rhyme, and stimulates phonemic skill development.

Power and status are captivating, especially the desire for social status and its commensurate authority and security. Cliques, smaller clusters within larger peer groups sharing similar views, behaviors, and attitudes, are a means of attaining societal power. Because cliques are typically composed of the disenfranchised holding views different from official ones, asserting powerful, contentious statements while escaping retribution and retaining anonymity is difficult. Hidden literacies, i.e., words or phrases with double meanings, are cliques' simple yet subversive communicative format. Such literacies refute and/or contest official social expectations and afford opportunities to join the current social power structure, as contributions generally disseminate views to larger populations and cause unease among those in power, a central goal. Written by adults and chanted by and to children, British nursery rhymes of old were hidden literacies. Their verses were powerful, subversive opinions of political, social, or religious commentary regarding then-contemporary events. Likewise, contemporary hidden literacies are technological communications used by youth for clandestine conversing. Although nursery rhymes and contemporary technology are parallel forms of hidden literacies, their authors, contents, audiences, and impacts are diametrically opposed with this paper exploring and discussing these comparisons, contrasts, and implications. The desire for social status, and its commensurate authority and security, is indeed powerful. Although extant social groupings are situational with desirability and importance dependent upon individuals and circumstances, people have belonged to, rebelled against, and attempted status advancements respective to the groups with which they retained membership throughout history. (Contains 14 footnotes.)

The present study investigated German-learning 6-month-old infants' preference for visual speech. Visual stimuli in the infants' native language (German) were contrasted with stimuli in a foreign language with similar rhythmical characteristics (English). In a visual preference task, infants were presented with 2 side-by-side silent video clips of the same speaker reciting a nursery rhyme simultaneously in German and English. To assess spontaneous preference for native or non-native visual speech, we computed preference scores towards the English- and German-speaking faces. The findings of the present study revealed a sex difference in visual speech preference. Only female infants exhibited a visual preference, by attending longer to the English-speaking face. Notably, the present study provides the first evidence for sex differences in visual speech preference in infancy.

Engineering is receiving unprecedented attention in early childhood and elementary classrooms. Teachers of young children may recognize the ways young children act as natural engineers as they design and create with materials from the classroom or playground. Everyday experiences such as choosing the type of bag: paper, plastic, or a reusable cloth bag at the grocery store can also be used to build explorations with engineering design and challenges. The meaningful integration of children's literature with engineering design challenges provides the further benefit of supporting the kinds of literacy instruction fundamental to primary classrooms. One method to consider is the use of Text Sets, a strategy from literacy that involves the selection and use of a variety of texts chosen intentionally along one or more dimensions where multiple kinds of texts might meet multiple needs or purposes. Lesson suggestions are provided for using text sets of books from different literary genres including biography, narrative, expository, and procedural books and activities to explore the properties of paper, plastic, and fabric with preschool through second grade students.

Regardless of where schools are located, teachers face the challenge of teaching and mentoring children, not only in academic achievement but in social emotional development. When faced with challenges, young children are especially vulnerable because they lack the life experience and developmental maturity to adequately cope. Relying on the lead author's personal experiences in leading Guam's university teacher preparation program and in developing an early childhood education literacy program, this article demonstrates how teachers adapted popular Mother Goose nursery rhymes, tales, and local indigenous stories, making stories relevant to the local culture in Guam. Stories, specifically aligned with local cultures and traditions, are recommended as an intervention strategy to strengthen children's emerging literacy skills and to strengthen children's self-identity and resilience. In particular, offering opportunities for students to see oneself and one's culture in children's literature builds cultural esteem and a sense of community.

Several teachers share their ideas for classroom activities. These include: (1) combining science and art on Earth Day; (2) implementing an inexpensive incentive scheme to get students to bring their signed papers back to school on time; (3) involving students in a virtual zoo; (4) planting real grass in Easter Bunny baskets; and (5) creating own lyrics for simple nursery rhyme tunes.

Drama through Mother Goose nursery rhymes can be integrated in the pre-K-3 curriculum. Activities can range from spontaneous gestures and facial expression, to guided performance where a teacher might have specific objectives in mind and rehearse a rhyme for formal performance. Activities include unison or choral speaking; "line-a-child" arrangement; refrain arrangement; and antiphonal or sound group arrangement. Many nursery rhymes can be read and dramatized for a few minutes during a regular class session with minimal coaching. These activities can make a significant contribution to children's expressive abilities. (Contains 21 references and numerous excerpts of nursery rhymes.) (RS)

As they are naturally curious about the world around them, young children ask lots and lots of questions. In classrooms today, however, there seems to be little space for these student-generated questions as teachers are more likely to pose the questions. Research indicates that question generation is an effective strategy to motivate young readers, to build reading comprehension, and to foster higher-level thinking skills. In addition to exploring the cognitive and motivational benefits of questioning, this article showcases how students can generate complex, juicy question from simple texts--in this case, nursery rhymes.

An innovative DVD of classic nursery rhymes and stories empowered at-risk kindergarten children to control in the home when and how much they listen, promoting better listening, reading, and overall literacy comprehension skills. Coupled with modest teacher training, and limited use in the classroom, the DVD generated dramatic vocabulary growth in nine months and remarkably higher reading scores three years later. Funded by a Georgia Improving Teacher Quality grant, the study was conducted in 33 kindergarten classrooms in 31 Title I schools, each of which normally produced significantly below average test scores in reading. The study documents 459 kindergarten students' mean improvement from the 27th to the 47th percentile on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III). The 303 students who remained in the system as 3rd graders and took Georgia's statewide Criterion Referenced Competency Test in reading failed to meet standards less than half as often (7.6% vs. 16.13%) as their system peers, and scored in the highest range 35% more often (39.6% vs. 27.02%). Forty thousand DVDs have since been distributed and the DVD's ten hours of audio, text, and pictures are now freely available online at hearatale.org.

Orators of folk literature and nursery rhymes entertain, inform, and persuade their audiences through the straightforward plots in those genres. Because nursery rhymes recitations usually happen in groups, they help children acquire the mechanics of oral communication and promote communal bonding. Although nursery rhymes have a simpler form than folk literature, nursery rhymes embody a rhetorical genre that propagates information and its deeper persuasive purpose. Thus, the exposition of nursery rhymes has the potential for improving one's communicative competency in creating concise and engaging messages. The single-class activity described in this paper requires little preparation, applies the pedagogical approach of active learning, and expands upon the ideas that childhood tales stimulate public speaking. The activity also emphasizes that storytelling fosters a connection between orators and their audiences. At the end of this activity, students will be able to: (1) construct a story-based impromptu speech that holds the attention of one's audience; (2) articulate how stories hold audience's attention and imagination; (3) recognize relevant communication theories/concepts that effectively engage with an audience; and (4) utilize specific verbal and nonverbal strategies that effectively hold an audience's attention.

Many U.S. classrooms today have at least some children with limited abilities to understand and express themselves in English. Two critical factors spell success or failure for teachers who have dual language learners (DLLs) in their classrooms: the teacher's understanding of and respect for the initial difficulties in learning a second language and the teacher's ability to adapt learning experiences in a creative and playful manner. Acquiring a second language presents challenges that differ for individual children. It is less difficult when done as early as possible and prior to adolescence. The young dual language learner is better able to hear the "music," or "prosody," of the new language and therefore has less difficulty with phonology than do older children and adults. However, there are definite hot spots where children in preschool through the early primary grades need targeted support as they move through the multiple stages of second language building. This article offers six suggestions that will enable teachers to help children through these hot spots.

During the first decade of the twenty-first century there have been increasing numbers of bilingual children entering early years settings, many of whom are new to English. Twelve percent of school children in the UK are identified as having a mother tongue other than English and this number rises to 50% in urban areas such as inner London. In some London primary schools 80% of the children are classified as bilingual and more than 200 languages are spoken in the homes of children attending schools. It is often assumed that young bilingual children who are new to English will "pick up" English naturally and very easily, but this article examines the complexities of the process of learning English as an additional language (EAL) in the early years. It also challenges some of the "myths" about the "Silent Period", as currently understood by practitioners and explained by linguists, and argues for a socio-cultural perspective on young children's learning during the early years.

This study examined the relationship between nonmainstream American English (NMAE) dialect use and various emergent literacy skills among typically developing children in prekindergarten. Correlation and regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between children's production of NMAE forms (i.e., dialect variation [DVAR]) and their alphabet knowledge, name writing, print concepts, and phonological awareness. The sample of 4-year-olds was diverse: 57.6% were African American and 33.3% participated in free and reduced lunch programs. Moderate, negative significant correlations were found between DVAR and all measures, except name writing. However, with the exception of nursery rhyme awareness, DVAR did not independently contribute to children's performance when it was entered into regression models with related emergent literacy skills as predictor variables. The results suggest an indirect role for NMAE use in emergent literacy achievement and that frequency of spoken NMAE production may be secondary to children's metalinguistic skills. (Contains 3 tables.)

Throughout the world, young children are introduced to some form of nursery rhymes. In Japan, the first type of rhyme a child encounters is called "warabeuta"--songs created through play. The English translation fails to accurately capture the degree to which "warabeuta" include body movement, touch, and interaction with other singers. A unique aspect of "warabeuta" is that they are not merely sung to children; the caretaker physically touches and moves the child, emphasizing "skinship," or physical/emotional bonding. Japanese caretakers consider "warabeuta" critical for child development, as they help establish the environment for healthy growth, like "preparing the ground for a growing plant" (Yamada, 2010, personal communication). Based on the reviews of existing literature, a few personal communications with local professionals, and their own observations, the authors propose that "warabeuta" addresses five goals that are considered vital in Japanese child development: (1) Securing "Skinship"; (2) Encouraging Gradual, Natural Development; (3) Emphasizing Physical Movement; (4) Achieving a Sense of Oneness and Harmony With Others; and (5) Understanding Notions of Past, Present, Future, and the Unknown.

The present study describes preschool read-alouds in terms of the types of texts to which children are exposed. The methods involved analyzing the genre and instructional foci of 426 titles read by 13 teachers throughout an entire academic year. Additionally, associations between teacher characteristics and texts teachers read in their classrooms were examined. Findings indicated that (a) narrative texts were the dominate genre read-aloud; (b) children's exposure to alphabet books, nursery rhymes, books featuring math concepts, and multicultural content occurred at generally low rates; and (c) few significant associations exist between quantity of books read and teacher characteristics. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

Reflecting on the influence of English nursery rhyme poems on one individual Asian child's language development, the paper reviews current studies on the socio-cultural dynamics of creativity, to examine how these theoretical and empirical investigations may help shape specific pedagogical practices in the expressive language arts in a Hong Kong context where English is not the first language, with particular reference to some Hong Kong young students' responses to these creative writing classroom strategies. (Contains 5 notes.)

This paper gives an account of the developments in the intensive psychotherapy of a seven-year-old boy with global development delay. It also describes the adaptations to technique and the changes in the setting that were required to support the work, which was undertaken in a special school. The importance of the regularity of sessions in helping to establish object constancy; physical and mental boundaries in relation to me/not me; inside and outside is also explored. A central theme of the paper is how close observation can inform the understanding of the emotional states of disabled children, particularly those with little language. The paper draws links between the early communications of mothers and infants and the therapeutic relationship, with reference to music therapy. It describes banging as a form of communication and traces the development of banging into more coherent nursery rhymes arguing that this development is an internalisation of the rhythm of the therapy and of the growing understanding between the child and therapist.

This essay explores the physical, emotional, and spiritual manifestations of heterosexism in childhood education. While there is abundant children's literature dealing with gay and lesbian parents of presumably straight children, little exists in this literature that directly addresses a child's developing gay, lesbian, or bisexual orientations. The author argues that rampant heteronormalcy in children's texts must be challenged just as feminists and multiculturalists challenge the moral and social prescriptions of "conventional" master narratives. Sociological and psychological studies substantiate that children's toys, games, cartoons, songs, and books affect children's perceptions of themselves and their world; this essay therefore reminds that "traditional" fairy tales and nursery rhymes are potent cultural markers that substantively impact childhood and by extension adult feelings of self-worth and legitimacy.

Informed by knowledge of linguistics, research findings in the areas of monolingual and bilingual acquisition, dyslexia and speech therapy clinical practice, five factors are proposed to argue that the acquisition of English by young non-native learners can be enhanced by learning activities which take into account factors of developmental sequence in language acquisition, language-specific properties, the relationship between oral and written language, the what-to-learn-first issue and the quality of the language input. Proper language goals can be set and appropriate activities designed, only if the language input provider interacts with a learner in a concrete activity while being sensitive to the developmental trajectory of monolingual speaking children, the development of the less dominant language in a bilingual child, the prosodic and phonological differences between the learner's mother tongue and the target language, the importance of phonological awareness which defines dyslexia, the use of non-abstract language structures grounded in concrete lexical items in the early stage of language acquisition and the strategy of expanding learners' utterance by one element as used in speech therapy.

This article reports an investigation of the attitudes and opinions of children's librarians towards poetry, and towards its promotion in the public library. It also reports some attitudes towards literature promotion to young people in general. A series of structured interviews with library professionals currently working in the public sector strongly indicate that children's librarians are themselves enthusiastic concerning poetry, and are firmly convinced both of the benefits incurred by children encouraged to read, write and listen to poems from a very early age, and of children's own enjoyment of this genre. Due to its brevity and memorability, poetry is regarded by the interviewees as the most accessible literary form for poor or reluctant readers, despite its wider image as a neglected and "difficult" genre for children and young people.

The article considers nursery rhymes as the foundation for learning. It is said that nursery rhymes carry all the parts of language that lead to speaking and reading. Because rhymes are short, they are easy for children to repeat, and become some of the first sentences children utter. The rhymes expand vocabulary, exposing children to words they may not hear in everyday language. Most important to music educators is the fact that nursery rhymes prepare young children for future music study.

Introducing nursery rhymes to young children can inspire them to explore language and motivate them to explore word play further in meaningful experiences (like cooking) that can be integrated into all aspects of the curriculum. Whether they slice, dice, or add allspice, these actions are appealing, because they contain many activities that help children learn. Food preparation and cooking are natural activities for children, because they incorporate the processes of touching, tasting, observing, smelling, and listening. So, too, do children love the rhyming, chanting, and alliteration of nursery rhymes. Nursery rhymes inspire spontaneous language, offer highly anticipated repetition, and carry with them morals and life lessons and can play an important role in a child's developing phonemic awareness. Teachers who are committed to child-centered learning find that integrating their curriculum is a most natural thing to do. They often start lessons with quality children's literature, developing a range of activities around an interest or theme, and taking advantage of children's spontaneity. It is within this context that the author came up with the perfect recipe of mixing nursery rhymes, food preparation, and cooking with young children that is included in this article.

This article reports on findings from a research study that set out to identify factors that enable children considered to be able by their teachers to extend and develop their literacy. The data substantiated much that is already known about the significance of preschool home influences on the emergence of literacy. It underlined the importance of children being able to hear the sounds in words--phonemic awareness--through frequently playing games and hearing nursery rhymes, which led to their early success with reading. It suggested that there might be a link between their ability to plan their imaginative play and their ability to learn aspects of literacy systematically on entry to school. This comes at a time when there has been a resurgence of interest in play as a means of learning in the early years in the UK, after the influence exerted by the downward thrust of the National Curriculum in 1990 and the National Literacy Strategy in 1998.

Investigates how the writing of some Year 6 children was influenced by exposure to the work of a contemporary author of children's literature and through reading a variety of fairy stories, tales and nursery rhymes. Concludes the children's awareness of story structure resulted in thought-provoking short stories with intertextual references. (PM)

Notes that an unusually large number of Chinese nursery rhymes provide realistic depictions of women's life experiences over the long history of China. Describes how they tell about women's fears and concerns as well as hopes and dreams and even sufferings. Divides those rhymes into three categories that represent three stages of a woman's life. (SG)