Answered Questions

A good place to start your research is the Education Libguide http://libguides.brenau.edu/education.  To find articles, click the orange tab that says, "Articles."  You'll find several suggested databases there.  To limit your search to scholarly articles, look for the check box that says "Scholarly Articles" or "Peer Reviewed Articles," and to limit your search to full text click the box that says "Full Text."

Databases you may find the most helpful are Academic Search Complete, ERIC at EBSCOhost, and Research Library by ProQuest.

You may have difficulty finding your topic addressed in one paper, but that just means you have an original idea!  You will need to collect research about play-based learning and academic-style learning in daycare settings, then report the differences you find.

Terms you may want to use in your search are "play based learning," "academic learning," "pedagogy," and "early childhood education."  Also, while preschool may be slightly different from daycare, in terms of metadata the Library of Congress subject term that covers both is "Preschool Education."  You may want to search for the term "day care" (in quotes) as well as "daycare" since both spellings of the term is considered correct.  Remember to connect your terms with the word AND (in all caps), or use the Advanced Search feature to separate your search terms.