Read Gelman, S. A., Coley, J. D., and Gottfried, G. M. (1994). Essentialist beliefs in children: The acquisition of concepts and theories. In Hirschfeld and Gelman (Eds.) Mapping the Mind, Cambridge Univ. Press (On reserve and available).

Write one or two pages on "Some of the properties of essentialist beliefs in children and their role in children's cognition."

The article is available under my name (Segal) through BISON.
 Click here http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/  for the BISON home page
From the Bison home page you click on  <UB Libraries Catalogue> .
You then click on CONNECT VIA THE WEB;
then click on COURSE RESERVE; In the spot for INSTRUCTOR'S LAST NAME
type in SEGAL, then START SEARCH. This will give you a page identifying the Gelman article (perhaps under Hirschfeld).
Then click on the article's PDF file which is underlined.