First Five Nebraska is an initiative of Early Futures Partnership
First Five Nebraska is an initiative of Early Futures Partnership
As public school educators and administrators, we deal directly with the outcomes of children’s earliest learning experiences. All too often, it’s alarmingly easy for our teachers to tell which students are likely to succeed or struggle in our classrooms within the first days of kindergarten.
In recent years, Nebraska has opened new opportunities for genuine investment in the development of children who stand to lose or gain the most from their earliest experiences. Among these, the Sixpence Early Learning Fund rises to the top as an investment opportunity that meets the most stringent criteria for quality, fiscal accountability and demonstrable results.
We know that a significant number of Nebraska’s children arrive at kindergarten unprepared to learn. In fact, more than 64,000 children ages birth-5 are at risk of failing in school. Of these, about 30,000 are infants and toddlers who are not receiving the kinds of early experiences known to support strong brain development during the first three years of life.
Babies are born ready to learn. At birth, the brain contains about 100 billion neurons that are connected by synapses carrying electrochemical signals in response to stimuli from the world around us. During the earliest years, those synapses are firing at an astonishing rate, and they become the neural foundation upon which everything else is built.
This week President Obama signed S.1086, the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 2014, into law. The bill, as described in a previous blogpost, reauthorizes funds through fiscal year 2020 for child care investments, and includes high-quality early learning as a requisite component.
It’s a beautiful, mild October afternoon in Broken Bow—a good day to get out with kids, which suits Nancy Ferguson and her colleagues nicely, although no one is quite sure how many families to expect for today’s activity.
Babies are born learners, and the number of quality interactions they experience in their earliest months and years heavily influences how they develop and succeed later. In recognition of the importance of early literacy and family literacy, Governor Dave Heineman has proclaimed November “Read Aloud to a Child Month.”
Is dressing up for Halloween different than dressing up for pretend play? The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) posed that question to Dr. Sandra Waite-Stupiansky, facilitator of its Play, Policy, and Practice Forum, and she said 'yes'.
Deliah Kearnes knew something remarkable had happened when her daughter recently told her what she wanted to do when she grew up. For months, Kearnes had watched anxiously as her child struggled to learn and develop a sense of belonging in a child care setting. When the new Educare Winnebago opened its doors earlier this year, however, that began to change.
The Nebraska Legislature’s Education Committee is touring a Sixpence program in Broken Bow today to learn more about the innovative public-private partnership before holding a public hearing on its visioning process for a statewide strategic plan for education as mandated by LB1103.
As a County Attorney, it’s my job to do everything possible to protect the public. Putting people behind bars who commit crimes is one way I do that. But I know from my personal experiences in the courtroom that we can’t simply arrest, prosecute and incarcerate our way out of our crime problems. We have to implement strategies that keep people from turning to crime in the first place.
One of the most important things parents can do to prepare their children for school is to read to them. The number of words a child knows upon entering kindergarten is a key predictor of future success, and the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that parents read aloud to babies starting at birth to build pre-literacy skills in the earliest years. And as children grow, reading aloud and talking about pictures in age-appropriate books strengthens their emerging language skills and literacy development. And the resulting closer parent-child bond boosts a child’s social-emotional development.