Preschool-age children are highly imaginative. They possess symbolic thought: the ability to use symbols-whether words, scribbles, toys, or inventive make-believe actions-to represent ideas.

1. Sociodramatic Play

1. With advances in cognition, preschoolers' play becomes more complex
2. Sociodramatic play predominates children's leisure activities during the preschool years
3. In sociodramatic play, children try out adult-like phrases and intonations as they enact their make-believe roles.
4. Much representational thought is required, as objects are used to stand for things that are not actually present
5. Sociodramatic Play and Cognition

1. A circular relationship exists between play and each of three fundamental areas of development: intelligence, creativity, and language.
2. These three intellectual areas contribute to play ability, and play, in turn, contributes to development in these areas
3. Children who are intellectually competent tend to be expert players
4. The very act of playing appears to enhance intellectual growth
5. Vygotsky has proposed that sociodramatic play is an important step between the concrete thought processes of early childhood and the more abstract thinking of adulthood
6. This kind of play allows children to practice using symbols

1. Components of Sociodramatic Play

1. Sara Smilansky, a pioneer in play research, has conducted in-depth observations of children's play in Israel and the US.
2. She has identified several critical components of sociodramatic play that can be observed in most children between 2 and 5 years of age: role playing, make-believe, social interaction, verbalization , and persistence

1. Play, Class, and Culture

1. Smilansky and other play researchers have reported that children of low socioeconomic status or those from non-technological societies play less often and less well
2. Play-Work

1. Children of low socioeconomic status are likely to be assigned household tasks at an earlier age than middle-class children
2. Research suggests that children cleverly work and play during the day into what has been called play-work

1. Non-toy Play

1. Play studies often involve presenting realistic toys-small replicas of adult-sized implements-for children to play with
2. Commercially made toys are not available in many other cultures
3. An educational implication of cross-cultural play research is that classroom environments must be planned with great sensitivity to cultural differences
4. Children of different cultural backgrounds use different kinds of toys, choose different types of play themes, and sometimes integrate work and play

1. Play and children with special needs

1. Children wit special needs engage in play
2. Sometimes children with special needs require extra adult support or modifications in the classroom or home environment in order to play
3. Play and Visual Impairments

1. Preschoolers with visual impairments begin to engage in sociodramatic play at around the same time as typically developing peers
2. However, they perform fewer make-believe enactments and are less imaginative in their themes
3. Play in preschool is often stimulated by novel play objects
4. Interesting toys or raw materials suggest particular play ideas
5. Teachers can facilitate play in children with visual impairments by giving regular tactile "tours" of the classroom, helping them "rehearse" play with new toys, or assisting them in interpreting the make-believe of their peers

1. Play and Hearing Impairments

1. Children with hearing impairments are also less likely to engage in make-believe
2. They symbolize less with objects and participate less often in joint make-believe with peers
3. A problem for hearing-impaired children is an inability to engage in the sophisticated communication necessary to carry out elaborate pretend play themes
4. Preschool play involves elaborate verbal negotiations among players, and children with hearing impairments have trouble participating in such negotiations
5. Teachers can facilitate hearing-impaired children's play with peers by assisting them in communicating ideas clearly and interpreting the play suggestions of others

1. Play and Cognitive Challenges

1. In spite of intellectual challenges, children with mental retardation have been observed performing highly imaginative and abstract make-believe roles with peers
2. The sociodramatic play of children wit mental retardation is very similar to that of typically developing children who are several years younger
3. Functional play is defined as repetitive action, such as banging dishes or removing and replacing the top to a pot

1. Play and Autism

1. Autism appears to severely limit sociodramatic play
2. Most children with autism engage in very little make-believe
3. They are more likely to use toys or objects in repetitive motor actions and less likely to symbolize with them
4. Why don't children with autism play?
5. One view is that children with autism lack a theory of the mind
6. To pretend, a child needs to ask, "How would the character I am playing think, feel, and behave?"
7. Further, a child would need to regularly assign beliefs, feelings, and thought processes to others in order to sustain elaborate play themes
8. From this perspective, children with autism don't play simply because they can't
9. Another view is that children with autism can play but choose not to
10. In one study, these children were found to engage in as much pretend play as typically developing children and those with mental retardation when they were encouraged to do so by adults
11. Children with autism, who may not be naturally drawn to play activities, may need much support to initiate and sustain their play

1. Fist- And Second-Language Acquisition

1. Children's language grows in four fundamental ways during the preschool years

1. Their speech becomes clearer; pronunciation, fluency, and articulation all improve. These areas of language development are often referred to as phonology
2. Preschoolers use many words, and come to understand word meanings more fully. These aspects of language are sometimes called semantics
3. Preschoolers' sentences grow in length and complexity. They begin to use clauses and complex work endings to extend and enhance their self-expression. Such language features are referred to as syntax
4. Finally, preschoolers become quite adept at using language to get things done socially. Social communication is often called pragmatics

1. Phonology

1. Phonology develops gradually in early childhood, and preschoolers can be expected to struggle with speech sounds throughout much of this period
2. Harsh correction or insistence that children start over again will not be useful. And may even be damaging, to language learning
3. It is understandable that children learn speech sounds slowly; each sound requires a complex manipulation of various parts of the body responsible for speech, called articulators
4. Articulators include the front and back of the tongue, the teeth, the lips, the roof of the mouth, the vocal chords, and even the lungs

1. Typical and Atypical Phonology

1. When a child cannot pronounce an l or r sound by age 5, or stumbles over words in stutter-like misstarts, a great deal of anxiety arises
2. Sometimes children have phonological challenges that can be identified and addressed in early childhood
3. Children who at an older age cannot pronounce many early-acquired speech sounds may be at risk
4. For example, if a 5-year-old cannot articulate the sounds d, b, or g- a formal evaluation may be recommended
5. Children who are not stimulable in these early speech sounds may be most in need of intervention
6. Children are said to be stimulable for a particular sound if they can accurately imitate it when it is presented to them by an adult
7. It is common for children to mispronounce a sound in natural speech but to accurately imitate the sound during a stimulability test
8. Children who make unpredictable substitutions for speech sounds they cannot pronounce are likely to be recommended for formal evaluation
9. Typically developing children make regular, logical substitutions when trying to speak sounds they cannot articulate (w used instead of r or d substituted for th)
10. Children who make irregular substitutions are at greater risk of later speech delays
11. Children who show single-sound stuttering, accompanied by tension or facial grimaces, may also be at risk of later phonological difficulties
12. All preschoolers are disfluent in that they stumble over words and restart sentences
13. Preschoolers are most likely to be recommended for evaluation and speech therapy when teachers, parents, and peers cannot understand them

1. Semantics

1. Preschoolers' semantic- their knowledge of work meanings-develops quickly
2. Early studies of word acquisition show that children advance from a usable vocabulary of 272 words at age 2 to 2,289 words at age 5
3. Children even more words than they actually speak
4. Young children have been found to construct the meanings of particular words very gradually
5. They may at first overgeneralize a word, using it to stand for far more things than an adult would
6. Semantics and Children with special needs

1. Occasionally, children will show serious difficulties in learning words
2. Children with mental retardation have been found to understand and produce words at a level comparable to that of much younger children
3. Children with general language delays often have difficulty retrieving words in speech and are slow to learn the full meanings of new ones

1. Semantics and Second-Language Acquisition

1. In the early preschool years, children do not easily distinguish between languages
2. Often they treat all words they have learned in both languages as part of the same mental dictionary
3. When assessing very young bilingual children's semantic development, it is very important to test competence in both languages
4. One of the most important advancements in preschool bilingual development is discovering the distinction between words of different languages
5. By age 5, children recognize that the words used in one language are somehow different from those in another

1. Syntax

1. Syntax refers to the rules that govern the formation of sentences
2. Children's sentences grow longer during the preschool years
3. Preschoolers use full sentences
4. The child who said "Move chair" at age 2 now says "I moved the chair" at age 5
5. All the parts of speech are now present: the agent "I", the action "moved", and the object "chair"
6. The child begins to use morphemes- small words or parts of words that hold meaning; Morphemes include endings such as the past tense -ed or the plural -s, and articles such as "a" and "the"
7. Preschoolers' utterances acquire rules for creating negatives, questions, and compound sentences
8. Most psycholinguists believe that by age 5, children have learned almost all the rules of adult syntax

1. Pragmatics

1. Children learn language so that they can communicate needs, feelings, and intentions, and thus become active members of a family, peer group, and society
2. The most significant language advancement in the preschool years is an ability to use words and sentences to influence other people
3. The ability to use language socially is called pragmatics
4. Politeness

1. A range of politeness rules exists in many Euro-American families

1. Don't impose
2. Be friendly
3. Give listeners a turn
4. Request, don't demand
5. Answer questions when asked

1. Children in the preschool years not only learn these rules, they apply them most often when conversing with adults or older peers who have higher social status
2. Preschoolers are already tailoring their pragmatic strategies to the social status of listeners

1. Speaking so the listener understands

1. Another social rule is that speech must be adapted to match the abilities, interests, and needs of the listener
2. In the very early years, children often talk at one anther, not caring whether their messages are getting through
3. During the preschool years, children acquire more socialized speech in which they begin to adjust their language to the listener's perspective and level of cognitive ability

1. Turntaking

1. Turntaking is another basic rule of social language observed in many Euro-American families
2. Children make huge strides in the early years in learning the turntaking rule-especially when they are playing

1. Autism seriously threatens the development of pragmatics

1. Young children with autistic characteristics are often unresponsive and avoid eye contact with others
2. They sometimes engage in echloalia, a meaningless repetition of others' speech
3. In almost half of all identified cases, autistic children do not speak at all

1. Pragmatics and Culture

1. Each culture has its own set of rules about how to communicate with others
2. Body language is an important component of communication
3. Misreading the gestures, expressions, or postures of those of other cultures can lead to irritation and discomfort
4. Avoiding eye contact is a good example
5. In some cultures, looking a speaker straight in the eye shows interest and attention
6. In other cultures, eye contact with people in positions of authority is interpreted as a sign of disrespect
7. Smiling is another method of physical communication that varies in social meaning across cultures
8. Although smiling appears to be a universal expression of positive affect, in some cultures it can mean other things, as well
9. Some Japanese-American families use a smile to conceal embarrassment, sorrow, and anger
10. Cultures also have different rules about the amount of touching that is comfortable or appropriate in communication
11. Another component of body language is the use of personal space-the distance one speaker stands from another while conversing

1. Literacy Development

1. Some preschoolers read and write very early
2. They do not do so in the same way as adults, however
3. Many very young children truly believe that they can read and write, and expect adults to be able to interpret what they have written
4. Research evidence suggests that these primitive scribbles and make-believe reading acts are directly related to later literacy competence
5. Writing development

1. Children's earliest writing looks like scribbling
2. During the preschool years some children's writing comes to look more and more like adult print
3. It is not uncommon for early letters to be inserted without regard to the sounds they represent in conventional writing
4. Children often include letters from their own names to express messages or stories
5. By the end of the preschool years, some children begin to use letters that are associated with sounds in the message or story they are writing
6. Often these letters stand for whole words or syllables

1. Reading

1. Some children also begin to read very early
2. Children who are read to and are encouraged to interpret print on signs, cereal boxes, or magazines gradually make attempts to construct meaning from print
3. Preschoolers' abilities to decode printed messages improve gradually until more conventional reading emerges in the early elementary years
4. Schickedanz has plotted the development of book reading among children.
5. In the first stage, children do not recognize that the words of a book come from print
6. Young preschoolers focus on the pictures an may even think that the words originate from these
7. In the next stage, children come to understand that the story comes from print
8. They may point to the text or, in an effort at humor, hide the words with their hands so the adult cannot see them
9. At this stage, they may recognize familiar letters
10. An important next step involves memorizing verbatim the story line of favorite books
11. At this point, children will sit and read aloud independently with such accuracy and adult intonation that unknowing teachers or parents will think they are reading conventionally
12. Such "by heart" reading allows children to explore their favorite books independently and establish personal relationships with them
13. In the final stage of Schickendanz's profile of early readers, children accurately map the story over the print
14. Some children will begin to read conventionally at this point with very little direct reading instruction

1. What children read varies across cultures
2. Some spend more time looking at magazines, catalogs, or other factual, non-narrative texts
3. There are three interrelated implications of cross-cultural literacy research for teachers

1. Children and families will come to school with unique and varied attitudes, values, and experiences concerning literacy
2. Classroom opportunities must be provided for children to express ideas or tell stories using non-print media which are valued within their own cultures
3. All types of reading material-including non-literature text found in letters, fliers, magazines, and mail-order catalogs-must be included in a culturally sensitive classroom literacy program