The years between birth and age 5 are critical for brain development, and how parents and caregivers interact with young children during this time makes a difference in all future learning, behavior and health.
Quality programs during the early years make a difference academically….and emotionally
- Children who participate in high-quality Early Learning programs show improvements in language arts, literacy, math and science.
- High-quality Early Learning programs have a positive impact on children’s socio-emotional development, cognitive ability, and academic achievement both in the short- and long-term. (Source)
Babies brains are ready to learn from the start.
- During the first year of life, a baby’s brain is forming more than 1 million neural connections every second. These neurons are necessary for the tremendous amount of learning a baby has to do in its first year of life.
- A child’s brain grows faster than any other part of their body during the first three years of life. At birth, a baby’s brain is about one-third the size of an adult’s brain. In just 90 days, it will more than double in size.
- Not only are babies capable of learning any language starting at birth, babies who are spoken to regularly in two or more languages have better executive function later in life. As a result, bilingual children have better attention or focus, which promotes success in school and later in life.
The Achievement Gap Begins Early On.
- The achievement gap can begin as early as infancy, when the physical conditions and stresses of poverty can take their toll on the development of the child’s brain and therefore the ability to learn.
- Children who don’t get the right support in the early years may never catch up.
- On average, children who are DLLs enter kindergarten behind their peers, particularly in the areas of language, literacy, and math.
What Early Edge is Doing to Promote Quality in the Early Years
We believe that all children, birth to age 8, should receive high-quality, racially, ethnically, linguistically, and culturally responsive early education, enter Kindergarten ready to learn, and thrive through 3rd grade and beyond.
To support this vision, we educate policymakers, state leaders, and others on what quality in Early Learning looks like, and we promote quality programs that are working, in an effort to increase their availability and to strengthen understanding of what quality learning means at every stage.
