Preschool education, early learning activities and development ideas that help young children build foundational skills, confidence, curiosity and a positive approach to learning.
The Ministry of Education will fund 107 Community Childcare Resource Centres, offering local families parenting advice, shared reading, toy and book lending and play spaces. Parents looking for books, play space or advice on childcare can turn to community support…
Talking over meals, sharing familiar books and repeating songs can help toddlers settle into care while building the language skills that support later reading and learning. Starting care is a major adjustment for young children and their families, but it…
A nursery teacher says creativity grows through child-led play, messy exploration and a few minutes of undivided parental attention, not a packed timetable. The question many parents wrestle with is not whether children need activities, but how many are enough.…
Catherine’s Royal Foundation project will investigate how outdoor experiences, creativity and relationships influence the emotional and social development of babies and young children. The Princess of Wales has unveiled a new research project that will examine how time spent in…
A review of 28 studies across 14 countries finds that children born before 37 weeks often follow a different speech sound development trajectory, strengthening the case for monitoring beyond infancy. A scoping review by Burr and colleagues has found that…
A free two-day event at Fernvale Community Club will encourage parents to slow down, join their children’s play and connect through open-ended activities. A free family play event in Singapore is aiming to remind parents that meaningful time with young…
Short, playful activities that help children hear, manipulate and link sounds to letters can build the foundations for confident reading at home. Phonics works best when children can hear, say and play with sounds before they are asked to read…
Expanded eligibility and lower co-payments have sharply reduced subsidised childcare costs, while California’s universal transitional kindergarten programme now offers every eligible four-year-old a free first school year. California families are paying far less for subsidised child care than they did…
From catching a ball to telling stories, ordinary activities help children build physical, cognitive, language and social skills , while missed or lost milestones may warrant medical advice. Children build developmental skills in everyday steps, from grasping a toy and…
Research does not show that fast-paced programmes consistently harm attention, but experts argue that slower rhythms, repetition and silence can give children more time to understand and reflect. At an airport gate, a child glued to a tablet can seem…
Paediatricians and developmental researchers warn that academic pressure and organised activities are squeezing out the unstructured play that helps children build creativity, resilience and social skills. Children are born wanting to play. The impulse is so strong that it often…
A short course of interpersonal psychotherapy was associated with smaller hippocampi and less negative emotional responses in infants, although the long-term significance remains unclear. Treating depression during pregnancy with a short course of talk therapy may do more than ease…
