Background/Context: There is much current interest in the impact of early childhood education programs on preschoolers and, in particular, on the magnitude of cognitive and affective gains. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: Because this new segment of public education requires significant funding, accurate descriptions are…

This article looks anew at the important role of physically active, outdoor play in children's social and cognitive development and the role of adults in supporting active, child-directed outdoor play. The authors describe the concept of play ecologies to highlight how children experience their environment as enlivened by their interactive…

The past decade has seen an upsurge in public understanding of early brain development. News reports, statements by policymakers, and commercial marketing of products for infants and young children have all contributed to a widespread understanding of the explosive growth of the brain in the early years and that stimulation acts as a catalyst to…

This brief report focusing on children' s kindergarten readiness i s the third in a series of reports describing data from the 2009 cohort of the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES 2009). Previous FACES 2009 reports described the characteristics of children and their families and programs as they entered Head Start in fall 2009…

This study examined developmental associations between growth in domain-general cognitive processes (working memory and attention control) and growth in domain-specific skills (emergent literacy and numeracy) across the prekindergarten year and their relative contributions to kindergarten reading and math achievement. One hundred sixty-four Head…

Preschoolers made numerical comparisons between sets with varying degrees of shared surface similarity. When surface similarity was pitted against numerical equivalence (i.e., crossmapping), children made fewer number matches than when surface similarity was neutral (i.e, all sets contained the same objects). Only children who understood the…

The campaign for universal preschool education in the United States has gained great momentum. Precisely as strategists intended, many Americans have come to believe that pre-kindergarten is a good and necessary thing for government to provide, even that not providing it will cruelly deprive the youngest residents of their birthrights, blight…

The main purpose of this study was to explore the care-givers of preschool education institutions whose cognition on playing equipment functions, conditions of both setting and using, and the main factors which should beware of design. Besides, not only constructed the factors of design, but also provided suggestions about setting and designing of…

Self-control is a skill that children need to succeed academically, socially, and emotionally. Brain regions essential to self-control are immature at birth and develop slowly throughout childhood. From ages 3 to 6 years, as these brain regions become more mature, children show improved ability to control impulses, shift their attention flexibly,…

What are the characteristics of programs that have the greatest likelihood of success in promoting the development of very young children at risk? This brief review of research offers insights for policy makers and early childhood educators alike. The United States is fortunate to have well-designed early educational intervention programs that may…

This study investigated the effect of preschool experience (two types of preschool: Madrasa and non-Madrasa) on the cognitive development of children in East Africa. In the three countries studied (Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania/Zanzibar) preschool education is burgeoning and government standards are being set. This quasi experimental evaluation used…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of Jumpstart, a supplemental early literacy intervention, on preschool-age children from low-income backgrounds. Participants consisted of 74 low-income children from three preschools and child-care programs. Thirty-three children were randomly assigned by Jumpstart to the treatment group and 33…

Through the years, educational systems in the United States have experienced great change. The one-room schoolhouse is now uncommon, but in years past it was the norm. Changes in society have brought about demands for early care and education systems that were not needed or provided as recently as 100 or even 20 years ago. Families today need and…

According to the mental-state reasoning model of suggestibility, 2 components of theory of mind mediate reductions in suggestibility across the preschool years. The authors examined whether theory-of-mind performance may be legitimately separated into 2 components and explored the memory processes underlying the associations between theory of mind…

This paper presents an overview of the Early Head Start program. The objective of the Early Head Start program is to enhance the cognitive, social and emotional development of low-income children, including children on federally-recognized reservations and children of migratory farm workers, through the provision of comprehensive health,…