Experts in child development offer practical guidelines in Going to School: How to Help Your Child Succeed but homework for preschoolers is not included as an attribute of success . The emphasis on homework has changed over the years. Once relegated to lower elementary years, it has become more prevalent in kindergarten, and more recently, even in preschool. In spite of researchers’ findings that homework has little value – and may even be detrimental – for preschoolers, there still exists a push for homework at this early age. “An Early Start on Homework” ponders the efficacy of homework for pre-kindergarten students.

Linda Davey, head of the early childhood and elementary program at Hofstra University, sees no benefit in preschool homework, stating that “Preschool is a time for some critical developmental readiness that should take precedence over homework: how to get in line, how to share, pretend play, kindness and fairness. All the things that are being shortchanged in this rush for precocity."

But, while few of today’s parents had homework before third grade, federal reports like “The Nation at Risk,” published in the 1980s and 1990s, emphasized the downturn in educational standards, and the push for earlier homework and an earlier start on preparing children for the future was born.

Often, it is parents who request take-home assignments for their preschoolers. Darragh O'Donnell, a fourth-grade teacher and mother of a 5 year-old, says that her child never complains about the homework. "She feels so special. My older kids had it too at that age, and I felt like they had such a background academically. It fostered a love of learning."

Karen Morelli, building administrator for the Apple schools in Edgewater and Cliffside Park, New Jersey, where some 4-year-olds can read and do multiplication, believes that “Homework is fun for children, and if you teach them at a young age, they'll enjoy it.” Jeannine Meli, director of First Discoveries Preschool in Middletown, has found that, for the children who do homework, “it's amazing, the difference. Their letters are formed better, and those are the ones that are apt to start reading earlier."

The typical preschool workload is one homework sheet a week, often described as "optional,” and is usually tracing and writing a letter of the alphabet. The goal of the homework is to get help children write and identify letter sounds.

Researchers, however, say that just because these children can do the work doesn’t mean they should. Loryane Carbon, who directs Sarah Lawrence College’s early childhood research and teaching center, believes that “"When kindergarten teachers say a child is ready to learn they mean, 'Can she play with other children? Can she work with a group?' They don't ask if she has a sense of letters or numbers, because they know those things will come."

If preschoolers don’t have the attention span or fine motor skills to do the work, temper tantrums can result, as well as an erosion of family time. Some preschool directors agree, and won’t give homework in spite of parental pressure to the contrary.

The Italians have had a profound influence on early childhood education. From Montessori to the more recent Reggio Emilia approach, the Italians are Brining Life to Learning. Watch children in any culture, who speak any language, and you’ll likely find a common thread: a love of learning. Margaret Blood, president of Strategies for Children, saw this universal when she visited the preschool programs in Reggio Emilia, a small city located in northern Italy.

“Preschool, Italian Style” describes her impressions and the vision she has for translating the principles to Massachusetts schools.

The schools in Reggio, where the emphasis is on the children’s competence, have infant, toddler, and preschool programs. They operate on a schedule flexible enough to follow the children’s leads and the environments are designed to inspire learning.

In 1991, Newsweek named the Reggio schools among the best preschools in the world, and the approach has been studied at colleges and universities in the United States. Blood, along with educators from 5 other states, called the schools “amazing,” and hopes to translate some of their features to Massachusetts schools.

A theme of the Reggio schools is letting children lead. The children decide what to study, and then teachers shape the topic to meet curricular goals. For instance, children may draw, then paint a flower, then look at and discuss real flowers, then return to the original representations. The children are then asked to describe what they’ve learned since they the project. The children’s pictures then adorn the walls of the schoolrooms.

Physically, the schools are, says Blood, “more like a cheerful greenhouse than a public kindergarten,” with high ceilings, a lot of light, and abundant materials such as markers, pencils, clay, and natural items. At the Diana School, one of the schools visited, children designed and created a new curtain for the local theater. American Educator Louise Boyd Cadwell quoted the founder of the Reggio approach, Loris Malaguzzi, stating that these projects should be like “long stories.”

Teachers at the Reggio schools document children’s projects via photograph or videotape and then share the material with each other to evaluate instructional methods and to plan future teaching. The goal is to make the learning process visible to teachers and children, but also to parents. Teachers train the parents of Reggio students to learn to answer in age-appropriate terms some of the hard questions preschoolers ask, like “where do babies come from?”

Because of cultural differences, no preschool program can be transported wholesale from Reggio, but there are several Reggio-inspired programs in Massachusetts such as the Advent School in Boston and the Children’s Garden, a 33-student program at the private high school Cambridge School of Weston. The Reggio schools inspire a universal love of learning that educators hope to transplant to Massachusetts’ day-care and in-home child care centers.

Susan MacDonald, the director of the Children's Garden and the coordinator of the state chapter of the North American Reggio Emilia Alliance, holds training programs for teachers and providers in the Reggio methods.

For Massachusetts to experiment with the Reggio approach requires a solid infrastructure – including better professional development opportunities and higher salaries. While not all aspects of the Reggio approach can be transplanted, the goal of helping preschoolers to love learning is achievable.

We are very pleased to be able to introduce you to a new publication, Every Child Can Learn: Using Learning Tools and Play to Help Children with Developmental Delay. One of the authors, Katrin Stroh, has been a colleague and friend for many years. We have had the privilege to watch and encourage the progress of this work toward publication, and are now delighted to welcome the finished product into our collection of training materials.

The publication, which is a set consisting of a book and CD/ROM with video, was written and developed by early intervention specialists in the UK who have worked for over thirty years with children of all ages with learning difficulties. Based on their extensive experience, the authors focus on the potential of children, that is, on what children can do rather than on what they cannot do. The main focus of the book, in the authors’ own words, “is always on the practical work, techniques and activities used to enable children to develop their learning, and to be able to play and communicate.”

The authors describe in detail what they call Functional Learning, a unique intervention approach that is based on the play and learning of typically developing children. In this approach, early play with objects is described as Learning Tools, the cognitive tools used by all children, cross-culturally, to learn and solve problems. Learning Tools include, for example, placing, piling, banging, pairing, matching, sorting, sequencing, and brick-building.

In the book there is a chapter devoted to each one of the Learning Tools. Included in each chapter are extensive step-by-step instructions and detailed drawings of practical activities that can be used to help children with developmental delay. This in-depth information enables parents and practitioners to set up and provide Functional Learning sessions.

Children across a broad spectrum of diagnoses and age groups will benefit from the concepts within this book-and-video set. Together they provide the means to unlock a child’s potential through interactive learning, directed exploration, and basic problem solving. Click on the link below to view an excerpt of this publication, and increase the impact of your treatment or training by integrating these valuable techniques into your daily practice. Every Child Can Learn: Chapter 3

About the authors

KATRIN STROH is a speech and language therapist, social worker and developmental therapist.

THELMA ROBINSON is a clinical psychologist, Montessori teacher and developmental therapist

ALAN PROCTOR is a teacher working with emotionally and behaviorally disturbed children and young adults, as well as being a child-and-family therapist and a developmental therapist

The arts in early childhood, as seen in an Introduction to the Visual Arts: Experience and Learning Series, are integral to the curriculum in preschool and pre-K programs everywhere. However, from Kindergarten on the arts are in jeopardy. In a time where electives and other so-called “non academic” courses are being cut from school budgets, educators need good news about the benefits of arts training.

The Dana Foundation sponsored a collaboration of cognitive neuroscientists from seven US universities who studied the connection between arts training and higher academic performance. Recently, the consortium reported their findings on the relationship between arts training and the brain’s ability to learn in other domains. The findings concluded that learning the arts can make students smart in other areas.

The group’s research studied how arts training can influence other cognitive processes and identified connections between areas of the brain and also explored the affect of differences in genes and temperament on the amount of improvement achieved.

Findings concluded that not only does training in performing arts and music training improve a student’s ability to manipulate information that extends to other disciplines, but that phonological awareness and geometrical representation correlate with music training. Memory improvement and the development of specific brain pathways are connected to music training and acting. Observational learning of dance may also transfer to other cognitive skills.

The study’s findings support the notion that in interest and participation in the arts “allows for sustained attention,” and that such training can work to improve cognition in other areas.

This model home visiting curriculum, developed by the Center for Prevention and Early Intervention at Florida State University, is widely used by home-visiting programs throughout the United States and beyond. From the first curriculum (Home Visiting Curriculum for Expectant Families) to the last (Home Visiting Curriculum: Toddlers's Months 19 -36), this comprehensive five-volume series is the product of more than ten years of research and development. The series is based on the ever increasing body of evidence underscoring the importance of the early years of childhood as being crucial to healthy growth and development. This family-centered curriculum offers home visitors the tools they need for guiding families to understand, nurture, and protect their young children.

Each volume of the curriculum is complemented by handouts for families that are visually attractive and that reinforce the content and focus of each home visit. The high quality of all the materials, both of the curriculum guides and the handouts, "uplift and honor the partnerships of parents and home visitors as they do the hard work of reaching their goals" [from Toddler's Months 19-36].

Many of the child development professionals who read this blog know and use this curriculum. It is our hope that others of you will discover it and incorporate it into your teaching and your work with families. It is a jewel!

Sensory development and brain development go hand-in-hand. Making Sense of My World illustrates, through play and activities, this process in babies, birth to 12 months. Each of the five senses as well as a sense of balance consists of 1) a receptor organ with a system of nerve endings for receiving a specific physical stimulus, such as the eye for the sense of sight and the skin and deeper tissues for the sense of touch, and 2) a specific region of the brain for processing the nervous impulses received from that organ

In order for these sensory regions of the brain to develop properly, they must receive an ample and varied source of sensory stimulation while they are still in the process of developing. Otherwise the development of these parts of the brain will be impaired and the individual will never be able to use a given sense adequately, even if the receptor organs themselves are fully functional. For example, an infant born with cataracts can develop normal visual acuity if the cataracts are removed by the time the baby is five months old. The brain can re-adjust. Timing of the surgery is critical.

Sensory Integration is the process by which a child learns to use information from all of the senses for learning and growing, to develop a sense of self and the world around him. As most sensory and brain development takes place in the first three years of life, it is during this period that a sensory rich environment is essential for optimal development of all children.

Click here for a Sensory Observation Guide of behavioral indicators of good sensory integration that is paired with behavioral signs of concern for children from birth to three years old. http://www.hceip.org/Sensory_Observation_Guide.htm

Growing up in a violent environment can result in severe problems for children. The Brain: Effects of Childhood Trauma examines problems in learning ability, mood, bonding, and attachment, and in problem-solving that can last a life-time with out intervention.

In a recent study Sandra Rollins Hurley, Ph. D., and Sally Blake, Ph.D., assistant professors at the University of Texas at El Paso, Department of Teacher Education, report their findings on the developmental consequences of violence on young children and their suggestions for fostering emergent literacy in “Emergent Literacy in a Violent World.”

The authors urge educators to recognize that children do not leave their home lives at home when entering the classroom and offer ways for educators to assist these students with literacy acquisition.

Violence clearly affects children; researchers who have studied the effects of community and domestic violence have found that trauma impairs a child’s memory and sense of time as well as his ability to develop trust. Feelings of shame, guilt, and helplessness are often present in victims of violence. The manifestations of these effects include a short attention span and impaired language development.

Children exposed to violence lack the positive environment and relationships vital for emergent literacy. The idea of emergent literacy acquisition is, in short, the theory that children do not suddenly read one day, but rather gather clues starting at age 2 or 3 that lead the their being able to read and write.

Suggestions for Intervention:

Building stable relationships is necessary for academic development, so educators need to maximize the time a child spends with one adult. Staff training and development specific to the needs of these children should be provided in order to maximize teacher effectiveness.

Because active engagement with text is necessary for children to learn to read and write, literacy-rich environments, with plenty of opportunities for children to respond personally to text, is a must.

Daily intervention in building relationships can positively affect emergent literacy and lay the foundations for growth and learning.

Literacy coaches in the Boston area are working to close the literacy gap between low income children and their middle class peers by encouraging parents to talk to their babies and children. As simple as it sounds, the more words a child hears, the easier it is for him to read and write.

A study published by professor emeritus of human development at the University of Kansas Betty Hart and the late Todd Risley of the University of Alaska found that middle class parents speak an average of 300 more words per hour to their children than do their low-income counterparts. Vocabulary at age three correlates with third grade language scores.

So the three year, $555,000 initiative Early Words, run by ReadBoston and funded by Staples, endeavors to reach out to the community through workshops designed to encourage parents to talk to their children.

Literacy coaches offer fun ways to get parents talking to their children. They remind parents to keep a running commentary on what is going on throughout the day. They encourage them to read signs out loud and to ask children to pick out colors and numbers in their everyday activities. ReadBoston plans also to educate day-care providers and preschool teachers on the importance of talking to young children.

The language spoken doesn’t matter; research has found that children who have a large vocabulary in one language pick up another language more readily than those with smaller vocabularies.

Simply talking to a child, not encouraging him to be quiet, and encouraging him to initiate conversation at a young age can make a significant difference in language use by grade three.

A child’s work is to play, but it seems that today’s children do more than “just” play. Scheduled activities, homework, club meetings, and extracurricular classes leave little time for unstructured, imaginative play.

According to Howard Chudacoff, a cultural historian at Brown University, in the 1950’s children’s play became focused on things versus the activities around which play had centered for so long.

Worries about safety and enriching children by means of regulated activities have turned the focus on play away from imagination-driven playtime that encourages children to regulate themselves, to the detriment of children. The lack of time spent making up games and using their imaginations has resulted in children who cannot control their emotions and behaviors or resist impulses.

When children engage in imaginative play, they engage in a kind of discussion with themselves in which they state what they are going to do, and then do it. Structured classes and leagues don’t allow for this kind of internal dialogue, and therefore children do not develop self-regulation strategies.

Self-regulation is important to develop and maintain; the more self-regulation a child has, the lower the chance of his dropping out of school. A better predictor of school success than his IQ, this self-regulation of emotions means children are better able to learn. As researcher Laura Berk explains, "Self-regulation predicts effective development in virtually every domain.”

Just child’s play? Think again. Make-believe games and time spent freely using his imagination results in a child who is better able to control himself and to learn. While this seems to fly in the face of “enrichment programs,” evidence suggests that time spent in play is more valuable than in a structured setting.

Read or listen to the National Public Radio story at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514

In the early 1980s the British psychologist, John Bowlby, visited the Division of Psychiatry at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. At that time I was Director of the Child Life Program in the Division of Psychiatry, then headed by Howard Hansen, MD. As a member of the Division I had the opportunity to participate in planning a small part of Bowlby's visit that included a luncheon.

At that time, the area surrounding the hospital offered no suitable lunchtime options to adequately honor our famous guest. So my staff and I decided to prepare our annual holiday party menu of homemade cannelloni, a delicious treat that was sure to help create a memorable occasion. I remember Bowlby coming into the Psychiatry conference room, joining us at the table, enjoying the meal, and expressing appreciation for our efforts. He was gracious, unassuming, and commanding. He was a giant of a man, not in stature, but in presence and significance!

Bowlby looked then much as he looked a few years later when interviewed on film by my colleague, Marion Solomon, Ph.D. Marion realized, what few others did at the time, that it was essential to document this great and kindly man who had made his mark on psychology by changing the way we think about and understand the critical nature and lifelong implications of infant-parent relationships. With cameras in tow, Marion traveled to London and to Tavistock Clinic where she and her crew filmed Bowlby for several hours as he discussed the development of his theories and reviewed case studies. The result was John Bowlby: Attachment and Loss, a historical treasure and a pearl in the Child Development Media collection of historic videos of the great leaders in our field.

Perhaps you had an encounter with Bowlby or with his distinguished colleague, Mary Ainsworth, that you might like to share! If you would like to tell us of your experience, please post it here. It is a pleasure to read personal accounts. Your contribution is most welcome!