Practicum 1

Research Paper
Preschool
Tyrah Urie
Introduction:

For my practicum one class, I am placed in the blue preschool at the child development

center with 16 students aged 3-5 years old. Inside the classroom there is the main head teacher,

however, there is typically many helpers. There is the TA of the classroom, student workers, 2

practicum students, one being me, and 3 adult helping teachers who are there almost everyday

depending. All of this help around the classroom seems to be helpful for the children as they

have multiple faces to talk to and seek advice and guidance from, giving them option. With the

teachers there to support, the Reggio Emilia approach has the children learn through play with

facilitation.

Program Philosophy and Theoretical Foundations:

While being apart of the Child development center, it is important to dig into the

educations program and philosophy so you know the style, the goals, and the purposes for their

children. Loris Malaguzzi, is behind the work of it all. Malguzzi came up with the “Reggio

Emilia Approach” for the CDC’s around. (Hewett, 2001). The philosophy and belief that

Malguzzi came up with for the approach was that of the children’s development in their natural

learning environments. The approach follows a group of principles as followed: children are

capable of constructing their own language, children form an understanding of themselves and

their place in the world through their interactions with others, children are communicators, the

environment is the 3rd teachers, the adult is a mentor and a guide, there is an emphasis on

documenting children’s thoughts, and that of children expressing themselves through many

different ways or ‘hundred languages’”. (Hewett, 2001) When reading these philosophy’s, I can

see exactly how the CDC I’m placed in implements these factors. Watching the children go
around the classroom and do activities and play with things that they are interested in that indeed

help them with different quantities of development is crucial to their learning that people looking

in from the outside with little knowledge of play learning may have no idea (Hewett, 2001).

Classroom, Family, and Community Composition:

Class, Family & Community Composition

Child’s Notes about child (age, gender, general information) and family (family structure,

initial cultural background, socio-economic status, language, and other relevant info

here)

AL 3 years old, female, mom works in the blue preschool at CDC, has a

younger sibling

LC 3 years old, female, been at CDC since infant, mom is a professor at the

college, sister went to the CDC

TH 3 years old, Male, dad works on campus

AT 3 years old, female, younger sister, mom is a Spanish teacher

LC 3 years old, female, parents are expecting another child

EL 4 years old, female, speaks predominately Chinese at home, mom and

dad were less interested in intergrating Chinese into CDC classroom

PK 4 years, male, parents are newly married, mom works in the toddler room

at the CDC

RL 4 years, male, Chinese, speaks Chinese at home, parents wanted English

emergent based learning in the CDC classroom, kindergarten in the fall

EA 4 years, male, only child, mom works at the college, dad is a ski instructor,

family is very important to the whole family, home time with family is key,

kindergarten in the fall

EC 4 years, female, has a younger sibling at the CDC

WC 4 years, male, only child, older parents, has a step father, play skills aren’t

as developed, kindergarten in the fall

CM 4 years, female, adopted from birth, new baby brother who was adopted,

mom works on campus and women and gender studies, kindergarten in

the fall

CL 5 years, male, 2 female parents, lower SES, kindergarten in the fall

ML 5 years, male, little sister goes to CDC, mom is a middle school teacher,

moms focus for child is academically orientated

BR 5 years, female, has been to CDC for a many years, going to kindergarten

next year, older sibling who attended CDC

LS 5 years, female, only child, older parents, family is very interested in getting

her active in sports, dance, friend play dates, kindergarten in the fall

TU 21 years, female, practicum 1 student, first real experience with young

children,

SS 21 years, female, practicum1 student, lived in Florida, has experience with

young children, RA on campus
SF Female, head teacher, lives in swanzey, see’s families a lot outside of the

classroom

Jackie Female, main teacher helper, lives in Henniker, teacher at CDC for many

many years, tons of experience

 Heather Female, teacher helper, daughter is at CDC, lives on a farm

Mora Female, TA, senior, has been in practicum 1, 2 and currently in student

teaching

J 3 years, male, has a sibling, parents work on a farm, very into the outdoors

and animals

A 4 years, female, mom is a student at the college, dad is a cook at apple

bees, tall for her age

Summary of Trends

When looking at the summary of trends in the children’s brief information, the classroom

splits up with 11 female children and 8 males with all female teachers! The class has some

diversity to it with a couple international children, but also diverse in the parental structure with

a stepdad, 2 mom’s, and being adopted in the mix. A handful of of the children have siblings and

or parents who are either involved with the CDC or working on campus. A handful of the

children have been at the CDC for a few years now and will be going of to kindergarten in the

fall.

Summary of all children paragraph

Developmental Domains

When looking at the NHELS, there are many domains that comprise of children’s

development that help support and guide teachers to give opportunities and option to help

progress child development. The domains consisting of, Physical development and health,

Language Development & Emergent Literacy, Cognitive Development, Social and Emotional

and Creative Expression & Aesthetic Appreciation all play large factors in the progress in the

child development in their own unique ways (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015).
Physical Development and Health:

Physical development happens from the time children are born as they are using their

bodies to explore and experience the world (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015).

With gathering information with their senses, gain strength, and practice coordination of their

bodies and delight in their increasingly ability to move and use their muscles. During the first 5

years, children progress from having all their health, safety, and nutrition needs met by adults

developing independence in self care. Children are becoming aware of their safety, healthy

habits and their body’s growth and development (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J.,

2015).

There are six interconnected strands and constructs that are important to consider when

creating opportunities to promote physical development and health. The six being body

awareness and control, large muscle development, small muscle development, nutrition, basic

safety, and self-care (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015). When looking at the

typical range of development/learning/skills and progression at the age of 3-5 for the specific

area being body awareness and control would be things like the ability to participate in a variety

of physical activities to enhance personal health and physical fitness. With gross and fine motor

skills children are able to continue to develop large muscle control and coordination to play more

complex games or preform more controlled actions and then to continue to develop small muscle

control and coordination. For nutrition it is just the ability to recognize and eat a variety of

nutrition foods, basic safety is the child’s ability to follow basic health and safety rules with

some reminders and self-care is the ability for the child to demonstrate increasing independence

with basic health care skills (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015).
 One good example is to look at one of the younger children in the room and notice that it

is easy to tell that her spatial awareness/body control and coordination is not fully developed yet

and is decently farther behind than some of the child’s other friends as when she walks its hard

for the child to understand where her body is in proximity to other friend and objects and

materials around the room. One example of health that I notice with a child in the classroom is

that they are always into trying all of the early sprouts snacks that is served to the classroom.

With the child making it clear that they don’t eat this type of food at home, it is interesting to see

how every time they sit down and try the food with no hesitation and enjoys it each time. The

child is also on top of washing their hands before every snack typically without need a reminder

just showing their development in nutrition, basic safety and self-care.

Language development and Emergent Literacy

The second domain is Language development and Emergent Literacy. It is crucial to

understand that children are born ready to communicate starting with babbling for babies and are

able to understand language before they can speak any words. Language turns complex as their

ability to communicate and understand grow and become more complex. Understanding and

using language is an extremely important foundation of literacy as children highly gain their

interest for writing and reading by observing and and later engaging with adults in everyday life

scenarios. The ability for a child to be able to have books read to them, have stories told, the

ability to tell stories, observing, listening, asking questions, singing songs, and the ability to play

with sounds and words and written language really supports children’s emergent literacy through

playful experiences (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015).
 The language and literacy domain has 6 interconnected strands and constructs that we as

teachers need to think about when considering ways to create opportunities for language and

literacy learning. When digging into Language and Literacy development, it is important to be

able to distinguish all 6 strands and constructs being, listening comprehension, non-verbal

communication, communication concepts, verbal expression, emergent reading, and emergent

reading (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015).

The typical ran of development with learning, skills and progression for children in my

age group of 3-5 years as seen in my placement, would be areas like, listening with

understanding to stories, directions and conversations, the ability to communicate needs, wants,

or thoughts using non verbal gestures, actions, or expressions, have the ability with adult support

to take turns in conversations and group discussions, use increasingly complex and varied

vocabulary and language and lastly speak clearly enough to be understood. Through all of these

areas the children are developing in everyday situations is typically done through play in the

classroom (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015).

A few examples with a couple of children in the classroom that engaged in Literacy

development and emergent literacy through play were one, during one of the child’s engagement

in letter making in the post office area of the classroom was when the child was planning to mail

out a drawing that they had worked on, put it in the envelope and was at one of the final steps of

writing their name, putting a stamp on it and mailing it out. Thinking that this would be a

struggle for the child without a name card or suggestions from a teacher, the child simply

grabbed the marker and wrote her first and last name with the knowledge in her brain. Another

child in this post office area was more focused on the scribbling part of the letter and in their

head was coming up words for what the scribbles meant, as they weren’t developmentally ready
to write alphabet letters and full words. Although this play wasn’t focused on the children being

able to read and write in the ‘letter process at the classroom post office, but more about them

getting the learning and engaging in the post office experience, yet having the writing and

reading piece be a subject of engagement in the play.

Cognitive Development:

The third domain that will be looked at thoroughly is cognitive development. Cognitive

development is the development in retrospect of information processing, memory, classification,

problem solving, language acquisition, and reading and mathematics. With cognitive

development in itself has three subsections that can be broken down when describing more in

depth of cognitive development according to the New Hampshire Early Learning standards. The

three subtopics being; Early numeracy, science and social studies, all connect in some way but

are each broken up differently specifically relating to a certain subject in particular (Wheatley,

E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015).

Early Numeracy

Early numeracy is first being discovered through mathematical ideas by infants and

continuously throughout life through play interactions and daily routines. For children to be able

to get an understanding of mathematics the engagement of math talk with children and adults are

important, the ability for children to begin to make comparisons, and use position words.

Encouraging children to pose questions, explore and problem solve is cognitive development in

itself (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015).

There are 6 interconnect strands and constructs that are underneath the concept of early

numeracy itself. Number operations, geometry and spatial sense, measurement, patterns and
relationships, data collection and analysis, and time and sequence are key concepts when it

comes to creating opportunities for early numeracy learning (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., &

Carver, J., 2015). These 6 strands have multiple different constructs underneath that compromise

of the strand alone that you can look for when trying to determine the child’s development in one

specific area (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015).

While looking at the typical range of development/learning/skills and progression for

children in my age group of 3-5 year olds would be in different areas. For example, under

number and operations I find that the children are able to demonstrate understanding of one-one

correspondence, counting objects in two different collections (up to ten) to determine which one

is larger, and are able to answer the question “what comes after...” a number without having to

recount. With geometry and spatial sense, the children are able to identify and name common

shapes, describe the basic features of the shape. With measurements, the children are able to

make comparisons such as bigger or smaller between two groups of objects and are recognizing

that objects can be measured by height, length and weight. The ability for the children to order or

sequence several objects based on one characteristic falls under the pattern and relationships

strand and data collection and analysis where children are able to sort objects and count and

compare groups formed. Lastly the developmental range I see with the children in this age group

in time and sequence, is the ability to differentiate between yesterday, today, and tomorrow

(Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015).

A great example of time sequence I see with the children is their ability to count down

the days until they have plans with another friends in the room, or their family, they are able to

say phrases like “3 more days until my play date” when it is scheduled for Saturday and it’s a

Tuesday! Or “tomorrow mom is picking me up early to go to the store”. Phrases like this show
me that the child is developing in time and sequence and understands the yesterday, today and

tomorrow concept. Another example of how the children isn’t just exemplifying time and

sequence but early numeracy all together is when they are working with the recycled materials in

the classroom. The child is always making groups of the materials based on what each material

was, counting how much they had in each pile, measuring how short and tall some of the

materials that he wanted to use based on the height, is able to understand the different shapes of

the materials, and was using the shapes of the materials a reason as to why they did/didn’t want

to use that specific material. This is a prime example of how all strands and constructs can be

wrapped up into one activity that the child may be engaging in.

Social studies and science

Social studies and science having to do with cognitive development is the idea that

children are just like scientists, always wanting to explore the world through seeing,

experiencing, and asking questions. This is done through interactions that are child-directed and

adult guided, and figuring out how the world effects them and how they effect the world

(Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015).

The three interconnected strands that are important to consider when creating

opportunities for science and social studies learning that unfold underneath the idea of cognitive

development are key concepts, exploring the physical world and exploring the social world.

When looking at the typical range of development/learning/skills and progression for the age

group I am in I would say that it is variant for each construct. For key concepts I would say that

the children are able to talk about things or people who are not present and use a variety of forms

to represent their ideas and feelings. For exploring the physical world the children are able to talk

about environmental changes and phenomena, and begin to identify the properties of various
living things and what living things need to be able to survive. Lastly, for the science and social

studies in the exploring the social world strand the children are able to know basic personal

information, are aware of own family relationships while showing curiosity about others’

families with noticing similarities and differences, act out family roles and occupations in

dramatic play, and show interest in issues of friendship and fairness (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P.,

& Carver, J., 2015).

I notice this a lot in two of the children in the classroom. In the dramatic play area these

two children are always acting out family roles and occupations whether it be through Dr. play,

house and family play with babies, dog family play with the play dogs, where one child was the

mom, the daughter, the dr., the patient, the dog sitter, babysitter, or even just the best friend. The

two highly value friendship and fairness for the both of them and at this younger spectrum of age

in the classroom is really special to see.

Approaches to Learning

Approaches to learning is a domain that has the children motivated by curiosity and the

interest to explore their environment while they are taking pride in their accomplishments as they

develop the ability to solve problems, regulate behavior and do things for themselves (Wheatley,

E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015).

Looking at the six connected strands and constructs of the approaches to learning that

important when trying to create and develope opportunities for children to engage in this are are,

inquiry and exploration, reasoning and problem solving, play, executive function, symbolic

representation and cooperation. I find that all six of these strands are highly implemented in

everyday interactions and experiences in the classroom (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J.,

2015). After looking at the development/learning/skills and progression of the children in the 3-
5, year old age group for each strand I notice a little something from each one. For the inquiry

and exploration, the children are able to observe, wonder, and/or ask questions, and make

guesses, along with the ability to use senses and tools to aid in that investigation piece. The

children are also able to use magical thinking, show misunderstanding of cause and effect and

then continue to to experiment with cause and effect. With the reasoning and problem solving I

see the children being able to talk about their own ideas, predictions, and plans building on prior

experiences that was self initiated or guided by adults. Lastly looking at the cooperative learning,

everyday the children are engaged in working with others to plan and problem solve toward a

shared goal and can describe the reasons for their shared decisions (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P.,

& Carver, J., 2015).

Prime examples of how the children are illustrating these ideas are even when they are

just when they are working in the block area. One child was in the block area with a very well

thought out idea and slowly other friends wanted to come in and join that area. Instead of

shooting those friends down, the child told them their idea and let them build off their structure

based on what her idea was and what the other friends thought they should add with ideas from

the first student. When the structure was done the children were very clear and precise to be able

to describe the reasoning for each one of the jobs and the process and what the structure was and

how it came about. Another example of approaches to learning is when one child was exploring

with magnetics. As I watched the child use their magnetic wand in the tray of magnetics and non

magnetics the child was able to show observation, wonder, and/or ask questions, make guesses,

explore hypotheses and use senses and tool/technology to aid in investigation. The child was also

able to continue with cause and effect and sometimes use magical thinking, showing
misunderstanding of cause and effect, and engage in repeated actions to make something happen

when trying to guess and figure out what was magnetic and what wasn’t.

Social and Emotional Development

Social development is the crucial idea of building relationships and the nurturing and safe

environment children are in that circulate a sense of self and the ability to trust others with the

support of adults to help them successfully navigate complex social situations. The goal should

be for children to have healthy social and emotional development that will enable them to build

and enjoy friendships (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015).

To look in depth at the four interconnected strands and constructs is important when

trying to create opportunities for social and emotional learning. The four being, self-concept and

social identity, attachment, social competence and emotional competence it is interesting to see

the typical rage of development/learning/skills and progression of the 3-5 year olds in the

classroom. With self concept and social identity, the children are able to continue to seek adult

attention and recognition of what they know and can do, are confident, self directed, purposeful

and inventive in play, and are able to notice differences and make comparisons between their

physical characteristics and others. The children are able to interact easily with familiar adults

but with less familiar adults are more hesitant to approach and respond, seek adult help when

needed for emotional support, when it comes to the attachment piece. With the social

competence and emotional competence the children are able to do things like approach others

with expectations and positive interactions, build skills needed to participate successfully as a

member in a group, being to understand the reasons for others emotions and respond

appropriately, the ability to stop undesirable behavior on their own, demonstrate increasing
competences in recognizing and describing their own emotions however, may still have

difficulty regulating strong emotions (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015).

A couple examples of the social emotional development observable behaviors in the

classroom are for one, a child having the ability to express his own feelings despite what his

friend was feeling. In the classroom the children have a feelings chart that they can move a face

picture of them to an emotion that they may be feeling throughout the day. This child in the

classroom hadn’t entered the room yet and his picture was on the angry section of the chart and I

had noticed his friend’s who was in the classroom was as well. The child that was able to express

his own feelings finally entered the classroom and after giving him time to settle in the room I

went up to him and asked if he was indeed feeling angry. The child looked at me for a second, in

a confused gaze. I had told the child I had noticed his face was under the angry section and just

wanted to check in and the child responded with saying “I am not angry! I am happy because I

have really big marsh-mellows in my bag!!”. This exemplified the child’s ability to express and

identify his own feeling with reason despite what his friend in the room was feeling.

Creative Expression and Aesthetic Appreciation

Responsiveness from infancy and up through are shown through emotional, cognitively,

and with their whole bodies to the arts and the natural world. The child’s ability to create and

appreciate beauty in all forms is a very important factor when trying to create and grow children

who admire and take pride in their work. Through the arts, and other forms of creative

expression give the children the ability to conceptualize and solve problems, develop their

imagination, and experience and express powerful emotions (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., &

Carver, J., 2015).

 With only a couple, the two interconnected strands and constructs that are important to

consider when creating opportunities to promote creative expression are exploration and creation

of artistic works and appreciation of and response to the creations of others and the natural

world. Through this, in thinking about the typical range of development/learning/skills and

progression for children in the 3-5 age group for the exploration and creation of artistic works,

they have the ability to act out elaborate pretend play through scenarios with objects, show

interests in learning new skills related to art, music, dance and drama, and display or preform for

others and/or talk about what they have made or done. Through the appreciation of and responses

to the creations of other and the natural world the children are able to discuss and evaluate the

music, art, drama and dance they have witnessed, and are able to show interest and respect for

the creative work of self and others and share those experiences and ideas about art and creative

expression (Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J., 2015).

A good example of creative expression and aesthetic appreciation is going back to the

structure that one child had started but then let other friends join and build on. Once the structure

was done and it was circle time the four friends had expressed an interest in sharing what they

had made to the rest of the classroom friends and teachers. In depth the children were able to

admire their own work and explain to the rest of the class their idea and what came out of it

explaining every detail of the structure.

Through all these different types of play many people outside looking in would think all

of these activities going on are just play. However, through all these domains through play the

children are learning and developing in each area. Many theoreticians like Piaget, Vygotsky

conceptualized children’s play as central to their cognitive, physical and emotional development.

“Studies provided evidence of developmental sequences in children’s play, leading to the

description and organization of play into taxonomies, these taxonomies revealed more detailed

subcategories of play compared to the global descriptors of manipulative and symbolic play”.

“Identifying progress in play and setting goals in play require created specifity”. (Lifter, Foster-

Sanda, Arzamarski, Briesch & Mclure, 2011). This is showing that studies have shown that play

can be more beneficial than the concrete, curricular work that children engage in. Play is

extremely important and in more times than not you are touching upon on more than one domain

ad every piece uncovered than if you were to specifically pick one thing for the children to work

on through curriculum.

Making Connections

For children to effectively develop they need to have a supportive environment and

family system. When looking at Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological perspective it helps us look at

what parts of family effect the child. The micro trust through family need to build trust , exo,

macro systems. The micro system directly relates to the family system in the sense that it is

consisting of the child’s immediate environment physically, socially, and psychologically (Swick

& Williams, 2006) . Things like the child’s ability to trust through family and to have that trust

built it is through interactions and engagement with the families and won’t be expanded if those

trust bonds aren’t build within the family directly. For the macro and exo system it involves

things that don’t necessarily involve the child directly like jobs, cultural beliefs, home traditions

ect., that effect the family systems and structure. It is very important to keep all these things in

mind when looking at they ways children are behaving and handling situations as one of the

easiest ways is to connect and understand the families.

 Family

When thinking of the classroom and the involvement of the teachers and the children, it is

important to also realize how important the role of the family is in the equation. When realizing

family is just as an important role as the teachers and students, it is crucial to look at the family

systems theory. Family systems theory can explain why members of a family behave the way

they do in a given situation (Christian, 2006). Family systems theory is used when trying to

understand problems of students in school settings. The diversity and the open relationship

between the teachers and families in the classroom is important and keeping in mind of the

family structure, socio-economic status, relationships, stress, culture, etc., can be key when

trying to understand their behavior.

In the classroom there are different family systems for each child. Family A, is in the

middle income class range and has a very close family structure where in the case of an only

child and older parents it may be easy to see the close connections between the family members.

However, being an only child may effect such things like the drop off. Having a close knit

relationship where the child is always around the parents and family members outside of the

classroom may make it harder for that child to say goodbye in the mornings and put stress on the

parents to see their child in a emotional state every time they have to leave. It may channel out

bursts during the day from the child of wanting the mom or the dad. Being that the family is so

close the parents really believe that school is enough for the child interactions and that home

time (home days) is key.

In the classroom, family B is in the middle class range and has a completely different

family structure than most of children in the classroom. This family practices a different culture

at home, speaking predominately mandarin at home and English at school. This family really
values the English curriculum and has done all they could to keep to avoid disrupting the child’s

development by keeping them in the CDC instead of taking the opportunity they had to put the

child into a mandarin speaking center. This may put some conflict and debate on the family

when trying to figure out what is best for the child as they are involved in two different cultures

in everyday situations.

In the classroom, family C is in the middle class range and the family structure is

somewhat like family A in the sense of older parents and having only one child in the family.

However unlike family A, family C really values getting the child into as many extra curricular

as possible. The family is supporting the child as themselves getting her into experiences on her

own instead of keeping it strictly within the family.

Child:

When looking at the family characteristics above for each family, these factors tend to effect the

child’s development in different ways. When looking at family A, there social structure may

effect the child’s development in the social and emotional sense. Because the child is so used to

having their parents around all the time outside of school it may effect things like drop off and

having to say goodbye, social interactions with other children may be difficult as they are used to

having that adult interaction a majority of the time. For family B their family structure may

effect the child in the sense that because they are back and forth with their cultural language at

home and the English language at school, it may effect his language and emergent literacy

development. Being at a constant switch and being ask to speak what isn’t culturally normally

for them can put the child at some stress as a learner. However, being diverse may open up extra

opens for the child. Lastly, family C’s family structure would effect the child developmentally in

the social and emotional sense because with all the extra curricular activities the child is engaged
in may help her in social interactions/situations with other children. The ability to go off and

participate in these extra curricular activities without the parent’s engagement as well may give

the child confidence and easier ability to go off amongst the parents and make those relationships

with other children.

Conclusion:

During my time at the CDC I was given the opportunity to learn and experience

children’s development through Reggio Emilia’s approach. Through play within the children and

facilitation within the teachers it opened up a wide range and variety of ways for language,

cognitive, social and emotional and creative expression and aesthetic appreciation. To be an

outsider looking in and seeing children engaged in as much play as the children are, one can be

quick to ask the question of what are they learning. However, through the New Hampshire Early

Learning Standards one can see that developmentally play has a it’s own way of getting the

children to learn and engage through activity!

References:

Wheatley, E.C., Cantor, P., & Carver, J. (2015). New Hampshire early learning standards

birth through five. Concord, NH: NH Department of Health and Human services.

Christian, L. (2006). Understanding families applying family systems theory to early

childhood practice. Young Children, 1-8.

Lester, S., Russell, W. (2010). Children’s right to play. An examination of the importance

of play in the lives of children worldwide.

Lifter, K., Foster-Sandra, S., Arzamarski, C., Briesch, J., Mclure, E. (2011). Overview of

play: Its uses and importance in early intervention/early childhood special education.
 Sick, K., Williams, R. (2006). An analysis of Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological

perspective for early childhood educators: Implications for working with families experiencing

stress. Early Childhood Journal. 33(5), 371-378.