Kimberly Maich (right), an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education, recently won a book award. She is with Gabrielle Young of Memorial University, who presented the award.

Five-year-old Fern makes a huge mess every day when she eats her lunch. Food flies all over the place as she slowly consumes her meal; Fern is still eating when the other children in her kindergarten class have long been done.

Fern’s educators are mystified. Why does Fern make such a mess, why does she take so long to eat her lunch, and what should be done to support the situation?

If you’re a teacher or early childhood educator faced with a similar problem, you can turn to page 150 of Kimberly Maich’s book, which received the 2015 Exceptionality Education International Book Prize Award earlier this month.

“Independent reviewers commented that your text provided a concise, yet comprehensive collection of well-crafted stories about children’s experiences as they begin their lives at school,” says the Exceptionality Education International team awarding the prize.

The book, Early Learners in Preschools and Kindergartens: 50 Case Stories in Child Development, Inclusion, Collaboration and Special Needs,  is a collection of 50 scenarios that describe and provide solutions for situations in real-life pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and Grade 1 classrooms.

“The idea is that case studies are in a very accessible writing style; they’re actually stories,” says Maich, assistant professor in the Department of Teacher Education. “They’re overlaid with all sorts of examples, definitions, questions for students to respond to, so that postsecondary educators can use it as a teaching tool and teachers can use it as a guide for what they encounter in the classroom.”

In the case of Fern, it turns out that the child has challenges with co-ordination. “Everyone’s wondering, ‘What’s going on?'” explains Maich. “They eventually figure out she doesn’t have the fine motor skills to actually undo and do up the little containers her parents are putting the food in. There’s a discussion about that: How do we strengthen her fine motor skills? What changes can we implement to make her more independent?”

That scenario falls under the child development section of the book, which deals with children’s physical and mental growth. The inclusion section covers how to welcome children with a diversity of cultures, races and family backgrounds.

The collaboration section examines how professionals in different classrooms, and the school and the child’s home, can work together to take a holistic approach in addressing children’s issues. And, the special needs part addresses the inclusion of children with various physical, social and emotional challenges, such as autism spectrum disorder, into the classroom.

Maich explains that, although she invented the stories, “they all, here and there, have little nuggets or elements of things that I’ve experienced, which adds a more authentic voice to it.”

The book, published by Pearson Education Canada, has been distributed to early childhood education programs, education programs for Ontario certified teachers.

Exceptionality Education International is a journal published by the Canadian Research Centre on Inclusive Education, headquartered at Western University in London, Ont. Its yearly book award is peer-reviewed and judged by a panel from an international selection of reviewers.

The journal provides “a forum for research and dialogue on topics relevant to the education of people with exceptionalities and how barriers to the full participation of all people in education can be reduced and removed.”