The aim of this project was to develop a product which gives one or more objects of daily use an additional function. Thru the creativity of children the object shall transform into a new source for play for pre-school children.The purpose of this work was to research how fantasy and free play of children could be enhanced. I wanted to know how I can motivate children to use their fantasy transforming objects into new sources for play.This was achieved by means of developing a number of different prototypes which I tested in Kindergarden. My observations lead to the development of a cloth-wrap for the chair which provides the required source for ongoing role-play. The chair suddenly transforms into a new landscape and multi-purpose object where children?s fantasy is stimulated and creative play is supported..

The objective for this study was to acquire a greater insight if children with concentration difficulties are assisted by outdoor education in the traditional teaching. With the use of a qualitative methodology four teachers were interviewed. The outcome gave evidence for that the teachers thought that outdoor education has a positive outcome for children with concentrations difficulties. The findings were divided into three key categories: the teacher?s reflections about outdoor education, outdoor education for children with difficulties in concentration and if there was any difference in how the children behaved indoors after having educations outdoors..

Although research on gothic fiction has given limited attention to children?s fiction, the last two decades have witnessed an increasing interest. To date the focus has been mainly on English literature with a recurring tendency to define children?s gothic fiction as a text corpus separate from gothic fiction in general. As a result, children?s gothic fiction has become isolated and is not considered as part of the gothic genre, neither the literature nor its adaptations.The aim of this study is to view children?s gothic fiction as an integral part of the gothic genre.

Stroke innebär ofta fysiska, kognitiva och beteendemässiga funktionsnedsättningar som påverkar både den drabbade och dennes familj. Tonåringar, speciellt flickor, anses ha störst risk att utveckla emotionella problem när föräldern blivit sjuk. Förälderns stöd till barnet är väsentligt men även sjukvårdspersonalens. I denna studie undersöktes hur barn uppmärksammas till strokedrabbade föräldrar samt vilket stöd som erbjuds. Fem överläkare och fem sjuksköterskor på en neurologisk rehabiliteringsklinik i Mellansverige intervjuades.

The body that is? You have to take care of the body is an ethnological study of how children look at body and health from their own perspective. During five weeks I did a field work in a school in Uppsala, Sweden. Ten fifth grade students and two teachers were interviewed. They were also participants in observations and did paintings.

Ear disease and hearing loss in preschool children can be difficult to discover and diagnose. This paper investigates ear disease in 20 children controls from 1 to 5 years of age. The aim of the study was to map prevalence and incidence for ear disease, and prevalence of hearing loss in a group of children.Twenty children wide aged 1, 1½, 3 and 5 were included and investigated according to a set protocol with psychoacoustic tests, tympanometry, ear microscopy and a parental questionnaire. The majority of the children could be evaluated by age adequate psychoacoustic tests and otoscopy. Tympanometry was the investigation method that was most difficult to perform.

The purpose of this study was to describe and analyse the living situation of children who practiced Muay thai at two different Muay thai schools in Thailand. The metod I chose was participation studies with the compliment of open interviews. My main questions were to see if and how the children were affected physically and mentally by the training and possible matches. I also wanted to see if Muay thai practiced by children could be considered child labour, reasons why the children did Muay thai and what opportunities Muay thai gave the children in other parts of their lives.My conclusions were that the training gave the children an overall god physical status, and did not affect the children in any direct negative physical way. Mentally the main affect on the children in training were the stress of not being allowed to eat before matches.

This masters thesis takes the providers perspective on public library story times for children. The main questions are: What perspectives can the providers have? How does the perspective affect the content and how is the story time drawn up? Five story time providers were interviewed about the purpose of their story times, the methods they used and the content they chose. A model with four criteria was used to analyze the result of the interviews. The criteria were: adult criteria, consideration of the childrens view, pedagogical criteria and literary/story time criteria.

The focus of this thesis is on what is considered to be a suitable foster home. For the study to be carried out an application had to be made to get access to the foster home assessments in a medium-sized municipality in Sweden. With the support of attachment theory and theory of standards different categories have been picked out and analyzed in foster home assessements that have been approved. The conclusion to what is considered to be a suitable foster home is a complex issue, as there are many factors that are interacting. Social workers seem to focus on the importance of a family?s ability to provide some kind of stability and security for a child who is considered to be placed within their home.

In my study I have participated at the Fifth Dimension / Active Worlds site in Villa Gymnastiken in Ronneby, where I have worked both as an assistant to the project leader and as a researcher, but also as a participant together with the children. The children are working in a virtual world called Femtedim, created in a internet-based program named Active Worlds Education Universe. The Femtedim-world are bridging together two physical worlds in Ronneby and Copenhagen. My main focus is on an intervention that occurred in the 12th of March when the research-team in Copenhagen, which runs the project in Denmark, decided to create a new challenge for the children since some of them started to get bored. They added gravitation to the Femtedim-world, which lead to a few different reactions among the children.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate what attributes were used in story-time activities, why attributes were used in story-time activities and what functions they have. The study is based on qualitative methods in the form of a literature studies, observations and interviews. The interviews were undertaken with two storytellers from the same public library. The story-time activities were adapted for children from three to six years of age. The study suggested that there was a connection between story-time activities and a social and cultural perspective.

Abstract   Study: Degree project in teacher education, Advanced level, 15 hpUniversity of Skövde.Title: ?The aim is for them to manage as much as possible on their own? ? a qualitative study of preschools´ indoor environment as a pedagogical tool for the independence of children.Number of pages: 31Author: Jenny Karlsson, Marie PerssonTuto: Gunvi BrobegDate: 2009-01-28 Keywords: Independence, indoor environment, preschool, pedagouge This study aims at examining the indoor environment of three different preschools as a pedagogical tool for the independence of children. Is the design of the premises adapted to the height of the children? Can they themselves reach the material they need and is it possible for them to reach their outdoor clothes or do they constantly have to ask for help? In order to acquire a deeper understanding of the different views of the three preschools, the question is asked: what are the pedagogues thoughts of the indoor environment of their own preschool in the perspective of childrens independence and what affects their choice of furnishing, planning etc? The preschool curriculum clearly states that the children must be given the opportunity to develop their independence. We have experianced that the pedagogues feel that they are unable to plan the environment as they wish and thus, interest is also pointed towards the question: are there any limiting factors that affect the design of the indoor environment, and, that being the case, which are they? The study is based on qualitative observations and interviews because it is in its interest to discern patterns and categories rather than quantity.

Title: ?It´s so sensitive? - Persons in authority's arguments around those persons with disabilities chooses to become parents.Authors: Therese Andersson and Malene HelanderSupervisor: Magdalena DambergThe purpose with this paper is to describe and analyze how professionals act when people with disabilities chose to become parents. To achieve this purpose we have chosen to use a qualitative method with deliberation interviews. The interviews have been implemented with six different persons in authority who work in social welfare offices and as LSS - administrators.Ensured to our questions, (1) How does persons in authority do in the meeting with persons that has a disability and chooses to become parents? (2) Which possibilities respective difficulties see persons in authority within social service and LSS with parenthood where the parent has a disability? (3) What is done in order to facilitate the needs that are added when persons with disabilities chooses to become parents? we consider that they have been responded to.Through our empirical materials we can interpret and read out the replies that we searched for in connection with our survey.

AbstractSchool is taking on a great responsibility in mediating knowledge of mathematics as technology is assuming greater importance in our everyday life. The aim of this study is to examine how the teachers in year F and 1 view their teaching of mathematics from an individually adapted perspective. I have based my research on different factual study books within the education for younger children?s learning of mathematics, and have from an individually adapted perspective made a comparison between theory and practice. The empirical data has been obtained through interviews with six teachers, three pre-school teachers and three teachers, working with pupils in year F and 1.

This degree project is an inquiry in how plan layouts and functions should be designed to suit families with children. The project aim to, if possible, find good solutions and designed houses that satisfy the requirements a family have.Last spring we contacted Willa Nordic AB, a company that produce houses, and they had a suggestion to investigate living for families with children. Their motif were that they lacked in information and knowledge in how to design houses that correspond to a family's needs. We thought the idea was exiting and motivating.The autumn 2008 studies were made on earlier published reports, in the subject "living environment", to get a solid background. The earlier inquiries shows a clear development through the whole 1900's, from being without standards to have well defined norms.