Recession Nation: Impact on Our Youngest Children

PreschoolFirst wants to know if you see a change in the young children’s behavior in your programs since the recession. Due to less income and more uncertainty, families who may not have needed a tight budget are now forced to budget tightly and "do more with less." Many parents are under-employed or forced to work multiple part time jobs with unpredictable hours. This definitely changes the family dynamics and schedule!

Some studies show changes in reading and math test scores of older children from families where parents work night shifts. They attribute this to more challenges these families have tracking children's whereabouts; eating meals together; or due to children doing household chores during after-school hours.

Do you see ways this may be affecting infants, toddlers and preschoolers?

Do you see higher stress or behavior tendencies? Positive or negative differences? (Not all stress is bad)

Have you made adaptations in program procedures to help families in these situations? If so what are they?

Dept. of Ed now has Office of Early Learning

As many of you have heard, Jacqueline Jones announced that the ED is now creating the Office of Early Learning. Although mentioned by Jacqueline Jones in a speech at the (NAEYC) Conference last Friday, the official announcement was made in a blog by EdSec Arne Duncan yesterday in the Huffington Post. The Office of Early Learning will be tasked with the management and administration of the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grants.

Beyond that we can only speculate….

How might the Office of Early Learning impact the other federal agency that oversees early learning: Health & Human Services and its Head Start office?

How might this new office develop regulations that impact those early care providers who currently serve 3 and 4 year old children?
Will we push formal pre-reading programs down further into early childhood?

Will curriculum become a set of pre-selected commercial products that reportedly embrace “evidence-based instruction” for our youngest learners?

If Public funded Pre-k in becomes widely available at little or no cost, will our most creative parents (i.e. Google and Apple Developers) still choose Waldorf schools and non-academic or high-touch (rather than hi-tech) early learning programs?

Is this the beginning of the end of the local Community based program for 3-5 year olds?

What do you think?
Read More:

Act Early, Act Often on ECE @ http://blog.eduflack.com/2011/11/07/act-early-act-often-on-ece.aspx

Kudos and Qu’s on New Federal Office for Early Learning @ http://earlyed.newamerica.net/blogposts/2011/kudos_and_qu_s_on_new_federal_office_for_early_learning-60047

Build Scientific Thinkers Block by Block

Block play was always a major center in the curriculum when I was teaching in the early childhood classrooms. We reserved ¼ or more of the floor space so children could use blocks to create worlds, illustrate ideas, explore concepts and build social skills. This new research from Temple University shows that construction type toys can also help children build vocabulary related to spatial concepts; which in turn support later learning in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines.

And it all starts with a simple set of wooden blocks…no electronic bells, whistles or tech apps needed.

Read more at: http://bit.ly/w0p8E9