First Five Nebraska is an initiative of Early Futures Partnership
First Five Nebraska is an initiative of Early Futures Partnership
In this short video of a TEDx talk at the University of North Carolina, researcher Kate Gallagher talks about the ground-breaking Abecedarian Project in which low-income children received quality early childhood education. Now, 35 years later, we continue to see how high-quality early care and education changed the life trajectories of the children who participated.
Did you know that numerous studies point specifically to the long-term benefits children receive when their fathers are actively engaged in their care? Research shows that involved fathers relate to their children in ways that produce specific developmental benefits.
High-quality early education is especially advantageous when children start younger and continue longer, says a new report from the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute.
Quality early childhood education leads to healthy lifestyle choices that help prevent chronic disease, says Nobel prize-winning economist James Heckman. Professor Heckman released new longitudinal findings of adults who participated in the Abecedarian study as children, and says they show that quality early education have long-lasting health benefits that could lead to reduced health care spending.
Challenges facing rural parents who lack higher education are affecting their children’s early development in language and other areas, said Dr. Lynne Vernon-Feagans last week at the annual CYFS Summit on Research in Early Childhood in Lincoln.
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.
Speaking directly to babies and toddlers in rich, complex sentences like this one will help them build language and vocabulary skills by connecting words and meaning, and learning through context, said Stanford researcher Anne Fernald at a symposium last week.
Nebraska would save $25,419 in victim, court and incarceration costs for every child enrolled in full-day, center-based early childhood education programs, says the University of Nebraska‒Lincoln’s Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools (CYFS).
Simple things can make a big difference. Studies show that time spent playing board games boosts the math skills of children in early childhood programs.
Researchers tell us that by the time children from low-income homes enter kindergarten, they have heard 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers. The result of this word deficit is a smaller vocabulary, which leads to slower learning. Children learn words spoken directly to them, and the more words they hear at a very young age, the better prepared they’ll be when they start school.