Narrative skills that are important for preschoolers include retelling stories, telling personal stories, and answering questions about stories. Narrative abilities form the foundation of reading comprehension. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an individually delivered language intervention on the narrative skills of…

Despite policy and theoretical support for mixed-age classrooms in early childhood, research examining associations between age-mixing and children's outcomes is inconclusive and warrants further investigation, particularly in preschools serving children who are at risk for poor adjustment to formal schooling. One recent study conducted in…

Background: Obesity is a major concern among American Indians and Hispanics. The Child Health Initiative for Lifelong Eating and Exercise (CHILE) is an evidence-based intervention to prevent obesity in children enrolled in 16 Head Start (HS) Centers in rural communities. The design and implementation of CHILE are described. Methods: CHILE uses a…

Despite significant investments over the past decade in the expansion and improvement of preschool programs, too many children, particularly poor children, enter kindergarten behind their peers. Because it is critical that voluntary pre-kindergarten (VPK) classrooms offer educational programs that both address the needs and developmental levels of…

This research reports a two-phase descriptive study of young children's engagement with ebooks conducted in Head Start classrooms. Phase 1 focused on the development of a typology as an analytic framework for observing engagement with ebooks in different formats (shared book; independent book browsing) and across devices (stationary touch screen;…

Among a nationally representative sample of 2336 Head Start children, patterns of school readiness were compared at the beginning and end of children's first preschool year, and predictors of stability and change across readiness profiles were examined. The present study documented that although the majority of children remain in a qualitatively…

Literacy programs often target preschool children who are from minority groups, are from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and are second language learners, as they are deemed to be at risk for academic difficulties. The family literacy program described in this article is unique in that it focuses on families who have an additional risk…

Child-care settings provide numerous opportunities to promote healthy eating and physical activity behaviors among preschool children. The majority of U.S. children are placed in some form of non-parental care during their preschool years. While approximately 15 percent of preschool children are primarily cared for by their relatives, most…

Head Start is the largest federal investment in early childhood education, serving nearly one million of our nation's most vulnerable young children and their families. It is the federal government's responsibility to make sure that these children and families get the highest quality services possible. Section 641(c)(1) of the Head Start Act…

The purpose of this study was to examine the hypothesis that helping preschoolers learn words through categorization may enhance their ability to retain words and their conceptual properties, acting as a bootstrap for self-learning. We examined this hypothesis by investigating the effects of the World of Words instructional program, a supplemental…

Continuity and intergenerational transmission of representations of attachment were examined in a longitudinal sample of 88 Mexican immigrant mothers and their children who participated in the local intervention group of the Early Head Start Evaluation Study. The authors interviewed mothers with the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and Parent…

Although coaching is a popular approach for enhancing the quality of Tier 1 instruction, limited research has addressed observational measures specifically designed to focus coaching on evidence-based practices. This study explains the development of the prekindergarten (pre-k) Classroom Observation Tool (COT) designed for use in a data-based…

With dual language learners falling behind their same-age peers at the beginning of kindergarten, understanding how school experiences can enhance language learning is critical. This study demonstrates how play among preschool-aged children can foster English language learning. Using an ethnographic approach, one classroom composed of two teachers…

Parents' rules regarding child television, DVD, video game, and computer use (screen time) have been associated with lower screen use in children. This study aimed to identify modifiable correlates of this behavior by examining social-cognitive predictors of parents' restriction of child screen time. Low-income parents ("N" = 147) of…

Narration, or storytelling, is an important aspect of language. Narrative skills have academic and social importance. This study evaluated the effects of a narrative intervention on story retelling and personal story generation skills of preschoolers with risk factors and narrative language delays. Narrative intervention was delivered in a small…