A toy or plaything is an object that is used primarily to provide entertainment. Simple examples include toy blocks, board games, and dolls. Toys are often designed for use by children, although many are designed specifically for adults and pets. Toys can provide utilitarian benefits, including physical exercise, cultural awareness, or academic education. Additionally, utilitarian objects, especially those which are no longer needed for their original purpose, can be used as toys. Examples include children building a fort with empty cereal boxes and tissue paper spools, or a toddler playing with a broken TV remote control. The term "toy" can also be used to refer to utilitarian objects purchased for enjoyment rather than need, or for expensive necessities for which a large fraction of the cost represents its ability to provide enjoyment to the owner, such as luxury cars, high-end motorcycles, gaming computers, and flagship smartphones.
Gender neutrality, also known as gender-neutralism or the gender neutrality movement, is the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions should avoid distinguishing roles according to people's sex or gender. This is in order to avoid discrimination arising from the impression that there are social roles for which one gender is more suited than another. The disparity in gender equality throughout history has had a significant impact on many aspects of society, including marketing, toys, education and parenting techniques. In order to increase gender neutrality in recent years, there has been a societal emphasis on utilizing inclusive language and advocating for equality.
Diane Silvers Ravitch is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education. In 2010, she became "an activist on behalf of public schools". Her blog at DianeRavitch.net has received more than 36 million page views since she began blogging in 2012. Ravitch writes for the New York Review of Books.
A preschool, also known as nursery school, pre-primary school, or play school or creche, is an educational establishment or learning space offering early childhood education to children before they begin compulsory education at primary school. It may be publicly or privately operated, and may be subsidized from public funds.
Deborah Meier is an American educator often considered the founder of the modern small schools movement. After spending several years as a kindergarten teacher in Chicago, Philadelphia and then New York City, in 1974, Meier became the founder and director of the alternative Central Park East school, which embraced progressive ideals in the tradition of John Dewey in an effort to provide better education for children in East Harlem, within the New York City public school system.
Children's culture includes children's cultural artifacts, children's media and literature, and the myths and discourses spun around the notion of childhood. Children's culture has been studied within academia in cultural studies, media studies, and literature departments. The interdisciplinary focus of childhood studies could also be considered in the paradigm of social theory concerning the study of children's culture.
David Elkind is an American child psychologist and author. Elkind and his family relocated to California when he was still a teenager. He studied at the University of California at Los Angeles and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1952 and Doctorate in Philosophy in 1955. David also earned an honorary doctorate in Science at the Rhode Island College (1987).
The Caretakers is a 1963 American drama film starring Robert Stack, Polly Bergen, Diane McBain, Joan Crawford and Janis Paige in a story about a mental hospital.
Food marketing brings together the food producer and the consumer through a chain of marketing activities.
Educational toys are objects of play, generally designed for children, which are expected to stimulate learning. They are often intended to meet an educational purpose such as helping a child develop a particular skill or teaching a child about a particular subject. They often simplify, miniaturize, or even model activities and objects used by adults.
Toy advertising is the promotion of toys through a variety of media. Advertising campaigns for toys have been criticised for trading on children's naivete and for turning children into premature consumers. Advertising to children is usually regulated to ensure that it meets defined standards of honesty and decency. These rules vary from country to country, with some going as far as banning all advertisements that would be directed at children.
Play value is the essential value of a toy or game for play. The term is frequently employed in the field of child development and playwork for the assessment of toys, games, equipment and spaces. When they are fun and engaging, playthings and spaces are said to have play value; those that are quickly discarded or are considered uninteresting do not. In short, objects of play must be compelling and encourage the child's involvement in order to have true play value. Play value has been defined as 'how much play can you get out of something'. Classic toys are examples of toys with true play value as they continue to provide new discoveries and adventures in each subsequent session of play.
Lucy Wheelock was an American early childhood education pioneer within the American kindergarten movement. She began her career by teaching the kindergarten program at Chauncy-Hall School (1879–89). Wheelock was the founder and head of Wheelock Kindergarten Training School, which later became Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts, and is now the namesake of Boston University's college of education BU Wheelock. She wrote, lectured, and translated on subjects related to education.
Nancy E. Krulik is the author of more than 200 books for children and young adults, including three New York Times bestsellers.
Advertising to children refers to the act of advertising products or services to children as defined by national laws and advertising standards.
Learning through play is a term used in education and psychology to describe how a child can learn to make sense of the world around them. Through play children can develop social and cognitive skills, mature emotionally, and gain the self-confidence required to engage in new experiences and environments.
Gail Dines is professor emerita of sociology and women's studies at Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts.
Abigail Adams Eliot was an American educator and a leading authority on early childhood education. She was a founding member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, supervised the Federal Emergency Relief Administration's nursery school program in New England in the 1930s, and co-founded the Eliot Community Mental Health Center in Concord, Massachusetts. The Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study at Tufts University is named for Eliot and her colleague, Elizabeth W. Pearson.
Boys' toys and games, as opposed to girls' toys and games, are a subset of toy and games that appeal to male children. Research suggests that this appeal may be driven by biological factors, peer pressure, parental choices, marketing, and tradition.
Marina Umaschi Bers is the Augustus Long Professor of Education at Boston College. Bers holds a secondary appointment in Boston College's Department of Computer Science. Bers directs the interdisciplinary DevTech Research Group, which she started in 2001 at Tufts University. Her research involves the design and study of innovative learning technologies to promote children’s positive development. She is known for her work in the field of early childhood computer science with projects of national and international visibility. Bers is the co-creator of the free ScratchJr programming language, used by 35 million children, and the creator of the KIBO robotic kit, which has no screens or keyboards.
Family Confidential: Secrets of Successful Parenting (episode 14) via Annie Fox on YouTube [5] 