For vulnerable and marginalized groups, access to early learning and child care remains uncertain. Inclusive access must become a top priority to achieve affordable care for all families.
When four- and five-year-old children are provided with a full day of schooling, space is freed in child-care centres that is instantly filled by younger children.
(Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages)
Access to schooling for four-year-olds is inconsistent across Canada. Families need to know children are immersed in high-quality early learning, and they shouldn’t be exhausted searching for it.
Having a vast and deep vocabulary affords precision and nuance in making meaning of the world, and this is key to children becoming proficient readers.
As toddlers form peer relationships, social pretend play and games increase.
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A unique dataset from 32 children on 36 different play dates provided the opportunity to study how young children develop peer relationships, and how consistent they are with different children.
If children love boxes and other upcycled items, do parents really need to invest in ‘eco toys’?
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How should we understand what toys or ‘loose part’ materials support children’s play, and what’s the relationship of parents’ education and income to this? A study aims to find out.
When we walk together in a good way, we learn to see the world from multiple perspectives.
(Walking Together/Emily Kewageshig/Annick Press)
‘Etuaptmumk’ or Two-Eyed Seeing is the gift of multiple perspectives in the Mi’kmaw language. A key practice of this in an early childhood outdoor program is walking together and sharing stories.
Early play-based learning helps children develop skills and knowledge before elementary school, and provides an essential foundation for learning in later years.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Lars Hagberg
Early childhood education isn’t about warehousing children so adults can go to work. There is an ethical imperative to support a paradigm shift in how our society values educating young children.
It’s counterproductive to push your child to read a whole chapter book independently if they are not ready. You might turn them off reading altogether. Here’s what to do instead.
A new study by early childhood researchers looks at four important features of a centre’s physical environment.
Locating early learning programs in schools provides stable programming infrastructure and allows for potential collaborations between early childhood educators and teachers.
(Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages)
Parents and caregivers are vital partners in education, and together, educators and families can ease back-to-school jitters and help make this an exciting and positive transition for children.
Canada is preventing provinces and territories from using federal child-care dollars to transform schools into one-stop centres for young children.
(Pexels/Yan Krukov)
Canada has much to learn from other countries about better ways of providing learning and care for children.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, plays with children in an early learning and child care centre in Brampton, Ont., March 28, 2022.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
Where new early learning and child-care programs are located, how they are designed, built and resourced, and what they teach can either add to the problem of climate change or help mitigate it.
Ongoing monitoring of students in early grades will be important to identify how missing out on in-person classes has affected students.
(Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages)
The lack of a fully interactive environment in kindergarten due to pandemic school closures may negatively impact some children’s learning in later grades.
Child-care policy needs to be designed to ensure children have stable access to high-quality care.
(Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages)
Adjunct Professor, Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development at Ontario Institute for the Study of Education (OISE) and Senior Policy Fellow at the Atkinson Centre, University of Toronto
Professor, Canada Research Chair in Determinants of Child Development, Owerko Centre at the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute, University of Calgary