To make informed choices, you need information. This book will open up the world of early childhood education and give you that knowledge. Everything is under the microscope for you to ponder. Join me as I try to inform, challenge, question and make suggestions based on thirty years experience. Let me take you through the options, and learn about the importance of physical space in creating healthy, happy children. Learn as I have done about the logistics of providing Quality care. Ask as I have asked where to from here. David Smith Dip.ECENZ

The vision of Learning Environments for Young Children: Rethinking Library Spaces and Services is about learning, families, and community, where the public library presents a community-based educational setting in which librarians serve as educators, guides, coaches, and facilitators of lifelong, active learning; access for children to enriching, satisfying, and developmentally appropriate resources and learning opportunities; diverse collections, programs, and technical resources for young children and the adults in their lives; programs and resources that encourage children's focused participation, creativity, critical thinking, cooperation, and problem solving; and a nonjudgmental, integrated, and interdisciplinary approach to lifelong learning, developing the whole person, child or adult. Included in Learning Environments for Young Children are field-tested measuring instruments that you and your staff can use to conduct a qualitative assessment of your library's children's services. These ready-to-use forms will help you collect information that will highlight the importance of early childhood services in presentations to funding sources, trustees, and other key stakeholders.

The long-term consequences of COVID-19 have been tough for children around the world, but even more so for young children already in humanitarian crisis, whether due to conflict, natural disasters, or economic and political upheaval. This book investigates how organizations around the world responded to these dual challenges, identifying solutions, and learning opportunities to help to support young children in ongoing and future crises. Drawing on research and voices from the Global South, this book showcases innovations to mobilize new funds and re-allocate existing resources to protect children during the pandemic. It provides important evidence on understudied and overlooked vulnerable populations, recognizing that researchers from the Global South are best positioned to fill these research gaps, contextualize findings, and support the uptake and adoption of recommendations by local decision-makers and practitioners in those same contexts. The findings in this book will be important for practitioners, policy makers and donors working in or interested in humanitarian contexts, on early childhood development, or early childhood education. The book will also be useful to students and researchers working in these fields. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

In early childhood, the most important period of learning and human development, young children often achieve developmental milestones in a short time. Learning from Young Children: Research in Early Childhood Music presents research on the importance of fostering musical growth during this period. These studies discuss: · applying brain research to young children's musical growth · music in the home and child-care contexts · musical characteristics of the young child · language acquisition as a lens on music learning · music as a foundation for communication · parental conceptions of the role of music in early childhood · music as a pathway for building community · using music to elicit vocalizations in children with special needs With research designs ranging from statistical, mixed methods, survey, content analysis, and case study, to philosophical inquiry, this book will help practitioners base their practice in research and offers a wide range of information for scholars and researchers studying early childhood music learning and development.

Young Children Playing and Learning in a Digital Age explores the emergence of the digital age and young children’s experiences with digital technologies at home and in educational environments. Drawing on theory and research-based evidence, this book makes an important contribution to understanding the contemporary experiences of young children in the digital age. It argues that a cultural and critically informed perspective allows educators, policy-makers and parents to make sense of children’s digital experiences as they play and learn, enabling informed decision-making about future early years curriculum and practices at home and in early learning and care settings. An essential read for researchers, students, policy-makers and professionals working with children today, this book draws attention to the evolution of digital developments and the relationship between contemporary technologies, play and learning in the early years.

While most children learn to read fairly well, there remain many young Americans whose futures are imperiled because they do not read well enough to meet the demands of our competitive, technology-driven society. This book explores the problem within the context of social, historical, cultural, and biological factors. Recommendations address the identification of groups of children at risk, effective instruction for the preschool and early grades, effective approaches to dialects and bilingualism, the importance of these findings for the professional development of teachers, and gaps that remain in our understanding of how children learn to read. Implications for parents, teachers, schools, communities, the media, and government at all levels are discussed. The book examines the epidemiology of reading problems and introduces the concepts used by experts in the field. In a clear and readable narrative, word identification, comprehension, and other processes in normal reading development are discussed. Against the background of normal progress, Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children examines factors that put children at risk of poor reading. It explores in detail how literacy can be fostered from birth through kindergarten and the primary grades, including evaluation of philosophies, systems, and materials commonly used to teach reading.

This book explores current research on young children’s beliefs and knowledge about the biological world – otherwise known as ‘folkbiology’. Contributors discuss factors that shape the development of folkbiological knowledge, as well as possible interventions designed to counteract cognitive biases that can interfere with the development of scientifically informed reasoning about natural phenomena. Taken together, the papers provide insights into the contributions of cognitive biases to the development of biological misunderstandings and into the life experiences and contexts that can contribute to or impede accurate learning of biological concepts. As part of a wider literature, the insights provided by the authors are relevant to the design of educational experiences that will foster children’s exploration and further their understanding of life science ideas. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Early Education and Development.

Play provides young children with the opportunity to express their ideas, symbolize, and test their knowledge of the world. It provides the basis for inquiry in literacy, science, social studies, mathematics, art, music, and movement. Through play, young children become active learners engaged in explorations about themselves, their community, and their personal-social world. An Integrated Play-Based Curriculum for Young Children offers the theoretical framework for understanding the origins of an early childhood play-based curriculum and how young children learn and understand concepts in a social and physical environment. Distinguished author Olivia N. Saracho then explores how play fits into various curriculum areas in order to help teachers develop their early childhood curriculum using developmentally and culturally appropriate practice. Through this integrated approach, young children are able to actively engage in meaningful and functional experiences in their natural context. Special Features Include: Vignettes of children’s conversations and actions in the classroom Suggestions for activities and classroom materials Practical examples and guidelines End-of-chapter summaries to enhance and extend the reader’s understanding of young children By presenting appropriate theoretical practices for designing and implementing a play-based curriculum, An Integrated Play-Based Curriculum for Young Children offers pre-service teachers the foundational knowledge about the field, about the work that practitioners do with young children, and how to best assume a teacher’s role effectively.