April 6-12 is the Week of the Young Child, sponsored by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and Nebraska AEYC. “Early Years Are Learning Years” is the focus this year.
Do you remember songs from your childhood? Does hearing a particular song evoke memories of people, events or places in your past? Dick Clark said music is the soundtrack of our lives, and just as music can have a powerful effect on us as adults, it can have an equally strong impact on the developing brains of young children.
It’s the state basketball championship game at the Pinnacle Bank Arena, and your team is down three points with one minute to play. You have the ball and one timeout. Both teams are in the double-bonus.
What’s key to a child forming healthy attachments? “Somebody’s got to be crazy about that kid. That’s number one. First, last, and always,” said developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner.
Families that play together build strong relationships. Whether it's reading together, playing board games during cold, blustery days or playing outside in the summer, interacting with young children helps build the strong neural foundation and social-emotional skills they'll need to succeed in school and later in 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.
Science and data drive our work. A child’s ability to learn is built upon a neurological foundation that begins before birth and is largely in place by age 5. The quality of a child’s earliest experiences, interactions and relationships physically shape the neural architecture of the developing brain during those first five years.