Deciding to enroll a young child in out-of-home care involves selecting a care provider who will provide physical and emotional security and support the child's development. As increasing numbers of young children are cared for outside the home, these care providers are being asked to share the responsibility of making sure the children are prepared to enter school.

What to Look for in Early Childhood Settings

How can parents select among the many programs that offer care and education to preschool children? Most importantly, the environmentally must be physically and emotionally safe. Second, look for developmentally appropriate practice and a language-rich environment. Third, observe for a couple to days to see if the children are highly engaged in what they are doing. Finally, look for content - children need to be learning about the everyday world, not just doing arts and crafts or engaging in rough-and-tumble play.

School Readiness

School readiness means different things to different people. We believe that children will be well-prepared to meet the expectations of kindergarten if they have had rich opportunities for learning about the world around them, have been in a language-rich home and childcare environment, and are familiar with the purposes of books and writing.

Developmentally Appropriate Practice

Developmentally appropriate practice is essential for preschoolers to learn. Children learn through hands-on activities and they must have ample time to explore and play. They also are still learning language, and they need to be in a language rich environment where they can talk with both peers and adults. A developmentally appropriate setting will support children's learning about the social and physical world they live in. This type of environment allows children to develop the basic language and communication skills that underlie reading, to develop age-appropriate skills and abilities, and to learn about the everyday world around them.

Language Development as a Primary Goal of Preschool

Language Development is one of the primary 'tasks' of the preschool years. The level of children's language skills when they enter kindergarten is one of the best predictors of their success in learning to read and their eventual school success. It is important to use the preschool years to support children's language development.

Children learn their syntax without much help from adults. But they rely on adults to learn vocabulary and to learn HOW to talk about things. This doesn't mean that adults need to give vocabulary lessons; it just means adults need to use a rich vocabulary. It doesn't mean adults need to give instructions on how to talk about things; it just means adults need to do a lot of talking so that children can observe how the adults talk.

Unfortunately, research shows that many preschool and daycare classrooms are not language-rich environments. Instead, up to 85% of teachers' talk involves behavior management: "Line up." "Stand quietly." "Go get your coats." There is nothing wrong with this kind of talk, but it shouldn't be MOST of the talk.

Caregivers and teachers should engage children in multi-turn conversations. They should describe things that the child is doing so that the child can translate their mental representations (what they know they are doing) into linguistic representations (words, sentences, ways of expressing oneself). The adults should ask questions, offer explanations, describe causes, describe temporal sequences, talk about the future and past; all this talk should include the children, and children will absorb these ways of using language to convey information.

Early Literacy Development

There are many things caregivers can do to help the child develop early literacy skills. It is neither developmentally appropriate nor effective to try to teach children components of reading and writing in isolation.

It is easy to embed early literacy skills in meaningful activities.

• Children easily learn the names of the letters in their name and in favorite words such as "I love Mom."
• Everyday, children can 'sign in' when they get to their classroom, using whatever form of writing (including scribbling) they are currently comfortable with.
• When the adult reads aloud, she may point out individual letters and words, might use her finger to indicate that reading English moves from left to right, and so forth.
• The adult may write down what children say, showing children that writing makes a permanent record of speech.
• The adult may ask children to dictate stories or explanations or labels for pictures.

All of these forms of instruction are embedded in activities that are meaningful to the child. The young child is not yet ready for instruction that is divorced from meaningful activity. The ability to profit from such instruction does not develop until age 6 to 8.