Now, more than ever, children need to develop autonomy and decision-making skills. Too often in Early Years settings, opportunities for learning through risky play are missed. In this book, Zoe Sills and Sarah Watkins support you to overcome the barriers to embedding and allowing space for risky play in your setting. (1) Know the value of Risky…

Children often say that possible events are impossible, and only gradually come to see these events as possible. For instance, they often deny that people could do unusual things, like own a pet peacock, or immoral things, like stealing or lying. These possibility denials are surprising. For instance, children have first-hand experience with the…

Fine motor skills (FMS) have been intensely studied in developmental contexts, with little attention to their empirical structure and developmental changes. We tested the factor structure of FMS on 5- to 10 year old children in two cohorts from 2020 to 2023, beginning in kindergarten and grade 2 and followed up 1 year later (n = 240 and 310, 49.7%…

This longitudinal study investigates metacognitive development in children aged four to six (N = 148; 74 girls; 106 White, 21 multiracial, 17 Black, 3 Asian, 1 Latino; collected in 2017-2019) compared to adults (N = 26, 13 women; collected in 2022). We assessed metacognitive monitoring and control using experimenter-elicited and self-generated…

Early childhood education (ECE) is important to provide the necessary support for children's healthy development during the preschool period. We evaluated whether ECE positively impacted early childhood development in Lao PDR. We pooled two rounds of nationally representative cross-sectional household surveys -- Lao Social Indicator Surveys…

Extracorporeal life support, such as pediatric cardiac extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), is associated with significant mortality and morbidity risk. This study evaluated cardiac ECMO survivors with central cannulation and found that 51.1% were discharged from the hospital. The study also revealed high rates of developmental delay…

Subtizing emerges at an early age, but it further develops when supported. In parallel, research has shown that it supports other cognitive skills along with early math skills. For this reason, it is important to identify studies in the literature to determine the subitizing levels of preschool children and provide example practices to help…

This paper follows an earlier report of young children's object play activities investigated in a cross-sectional sample of 289 typically developing children. Thirty-minute videotaped observations were taken of children at 8, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48, 54, and 60 months of age in their homes. Forty-nine percent were boys. Children were identified…

US Catholic schools have been known to educate the whole child. However, the Catholic sector has not widely embraced a shared understanding of whole child education or how it is operationalised, nor have researchers interested in this sector effectively measured the impact of approaches in any or all domains. This conceptual paper presents a…

This theoretical article examines the crucial role of play-based learning (PBL) in enhancing the mathematical skills of children in the Early Childhood Phase, referred to as Foundation Phase (Grade R-3) learners, within a South African context. The article argues that the traditional approach to teaching early childhood mathematics, where teachers…

Cultural learning environments and gender roles play a key role in shaping children's development, particularly regarding their social and emotional skills. However, most work on this topic relies on methods that overlook lived experiences and assume high participant literacy, which may not apply to Majority World contexts. To address these…

This brief provides policymakers and practitioners with a comprehensive overview of the purpose, characteristics, uses, and types of Kindergarten Entry Assessments (KEAs). It emphasizes the importance of high-quality KEAs in guiding instructional practices and assessing developmental progress in young learners. It highlights that high-quality KEAs…

Language, literacy, and social-emotional skills are important for successful participation in society. These skills develop through interaction with others and through explicit instruction. An important activity to contribute to the development of these skills in young children is shared storybook reading. For deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH)…

Background: Several studies have reported low adherence to World Health Organization sedentary behavior (SB) guidelines in the early years. The purpose of this review is to examine the associations between time spent in different types of SB (screen time and habitual SB) and motor competence (MC; fundamental motor skills, fine and gross motor…

As research on summer camp continues to expand and both scholars and practitioners gain a better understanding of the impact of the experience, it has become important to explore how the experience of summer camp is connected to the larger ecology of youth development. This study explores strategies of Christian summer camps for impacting faith in…