A young child's stress-sensitive neurobiological system is immature and open to being shaped by experience. When children enter preschool, external demands on them to adjust are different from the demands they experience at day care. In Finland, the last year before children transfer to the comprehensive school is called preschool. The preschool…

The Illinois Child Care Collaboration Program promotes collaboration between child care and other early care and education providers, including Early Head Start (EHS), by creating policies to ease blending of funds to extend the day or year of existing services. While no funding is provided through the initiative, participating programs may take…

Greenhouses come in all shapes, sizes, and price ranges: from simple hand-built plastic-covered frames to dazzling geodesic domes. Some child care centers install greenhouses as a part of their outdoor garden space. Other centers have incorporated a greenhouse into the building itself. Greenhouses provide a great opportunity for children to grow…

In many countries playground design is driven more by safety than developmental benefits. As risk minimisation strategies become more stringent, many researchers and practitioners are questioning whether young children are able to take sufficient risks in play in order for their play experiences to be interesting and developmentally challenging.…

This study investigated teachers' experiences of closeness during interactions with children in child care. Structured interviews were conducted with 24 female teachers who were teaching children between the ages of three and five (mean age = 3.9) regarding their conceptions of closeness, and their perceptions of their own and the child's…

The purpose of this study was to extend existing research relative to the predictors of early mathematics skills. Using Vygotskian theory as a framework, our primary goal was to determine whether social skills or letter awareness skills served as better mediators between receptive language and early mathematics concepts. The secondary goal was to…

The Nebraska Early Childhood Coach (ECC) training was a 3 day (8 hours) professional development event sponsored by the Nebraska Department of Education, Office of Child Development in 2009-2010. Sixty-five early childhood teachers and related service providers participated for the purpose of learning the basic principles and behaviors associated…

Houston Independent School District (HISD) has provided prekindergarten classes for Houston area four-year old students since the 1985-1986 academic year. The focus of the program is on lifelong learning to enhance the physical, emotional, and social wellbeing of the whole child and provide the foundational skills required for career and college…

Since 1999, Nebraska's Early Head Start Infant/Toddler Quality Initiative has supported Early Head Start (EHS) and community child care partnerships to improve the quality and professionalism of infant and toddler care. EHS programs apply to receive funding to establish partnerships with center-based or home-based child care.The initiative has…

The White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African-Americans (WHIEEAA) has a mandate on behalf of African-American students to close the achievement gap. This goal requires attention to the full education continuum, from the early childhood years through adulthood. Learning begins at birth and the preparation for learning starts well…

The current study investigated the effect of colour vs. black-and-white pictures on the stories children told using the pictures as stimuli. Participants were 22 preschool children aged 4-6 (M = 59.98, SD = 7.52) attending day-care centres in a Western Canadian city. Two story sets of five pictures each, depicting stories with similar structure,…

Overweight is increasing in children, leading to negative health consequences. Children also lack appropriate levels of important vitamins and nutrients in their diets. Environmental cues, such as food proximity, have been shown to influence consumption rates in adults. The present study has tested whether proximity to either a nutrient-dense or…

A majority of U.S. children attend some type of child care before entering kindergarten. The quality of child care environment and of teacher-child interactions appear to influence children's development, but little attention has been paid to the influence of child-care peers. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort,…

This article addresses various educational cultures observed today in a variety of training and professional development contexts in the field of early childhood education. The paper also analyses methods of developing and implementing training or professional "accompaniment". This notion of "accompaniment" has been developed…

This article presents the key findings and discussion from a research project and subsequent report: "Involving young children in decision making: An exploration of practitioners' views". This research explored early childhood practitioners'--childcare workers, kindergarten, pre-primary and grade 1-2 teachers--views on decision making…