Children's interest in exploration is the hallmark of their curiosity. As people who are significant in organising children's environment, how teachers and parents respond to children's exploratory behaviours may promote or hinder the child's desire for further investigation. With reference to Kurt Lewin's concept of 'total situation', various hypothetical scenarios on children's exploratory behaviours in different contexts were designed to solicit teachers' and parents' interpretation of the behaviour, how they might respond in the situation and the rationale behind their response. The findings indicated that the decision of adults in allowing children to explore is influenced by a combination of child, adult and situational factors.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004430802181965]

Previous research on the development of children's concept of distributive justice has shed little light on the child's ability to consider the characteristics of the recipients when making judgement of fair sharing. Previous research has shown that preschool children generally apply principles of equality when making decisions for fair sharing of materials, regardless of the characteristics of the recipients. The idea of equality refers to equal sharing of each individual person. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether preschool children would share toys equally across situations or on the basis of the characteristics of the recipients. The study also observed whether each member in a group would be counted as one unit for allocation across situations. A crucial piece of evidence for understanding children's concept of distributive justice is demonstrated by children's ability to view situations differently based on the characteristics of the recipients. These findings serve as a starting point to support the hypothesis that preschool children do take contextual information into account when making distributive justice decisions.
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This paper provides information on a measure that was developed to assess children's level of development at preschool and entry to school level, as well as their readiness for formal schooling. This measure - Who Am I? - is based on early copying and writing skills and is designed to identify the broad stages of development that underlie children's readiness for more formal learning in a school situation. Although originally developed in Australia, it has now been used in studies in a number of different countries, including Canada, and data from these studies provide some insight into the variations in development that are associated with different patterns of preschool provision and different ages of entry into an educational program. The results of these studies indicate that Who Am I? provides a valid measure of development across different language and cultural groups and can therefore be used as a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of different forms of early childhood provision, as well as children's readiness for more formal learning in a school situation.
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The present study investigated physical activity trends among young children aged three, four, and five years old in Hong Kong preschools using pedometry. Subjects were eighty-six boys and sixty-two girls (n = 148). The Digi-walker sw-200 electronic pedometers were utilized to collect activity data during daily regular physical activities in three preschools. School A was located at the rural area whereas School B and C were in urban areas. An observation inventory, Children Activity Rating's Scale (CARS), was used to categorize the intensity level of the physical activities and to validate the pedometer counts. In line with overseas studies, significant age and gender differences in physical activity levels were also observed among the Hong Kong preschool children. A two (gender) × three (age groups) analysis of variance indicated that both main effects were statistically significant (p < 0.05). Older children in the school (School A) with a larger outdoor play space in a rural district were much more active than their counterparts in urban schools (Schools B and C) with limited indoor play space. The pedometer counts correlated significantly (p < 0.05) with the CARS scores, which suggested that pedometry can be a reliable tool to measure the intensity of physical activity level of preschool children.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0300443022000022459]