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Here’s some very recent research results showing the long term benefits of early learning, reported by The Guardian newspaper (UK):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/oct/14/childhood-stimulation-key-brain-development
Some quotes:
Farah’s results showed that the development of the cortex in late teens was closely correlated with a child’s cognitive stimulation at the age of four. All other factors including parental nurturance at all ages and cognitive stimulation at age eight – had no effect. Farah said her results were evidence for the existence of a sensitive period, early in a person’s life, that determined the optimal development of the cortex. “It really does support the idea that those early years are especially influential.”
Andrea Danese, a clinical lecturer in child and adolescent psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, said … that this kind of research highlighted the “tremendous role” that parents and carers had to play in enabling children to develop their cognitive, social, and emotional skills by providing safe, predictable, stimulating, and responsive personal interactions with children.
It’s a bit of a pity that the study only started on the children when they were 4. Do we need to wait for another 20 years for science to do another longitudinal study to prove what we already witness ourselves all the time – that early learning for babies and toddlers will also have a long term beneficial impact?
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Feel free to discuss this blog post in the comments here or in this Forum post:
http://forum.brillkids.com/general-discussion-b5/latest-research-showing-long-term-benefits-of-early-learning/
KL Wong is the Founder and CEO of BrillKids, and also father of Felicity, aged 6. He can be contacted at KL(at)brillkids(dot)com.
We’re positively thrilled to announce that Dr. J. Richard Gentry will become a contributor to the BrillKids Blog!
A former University professor and elementary school teacher, 
Dr. Gentry brings to BrillKids over thirty years of experience in the field of early education. He is also the author of many books including Raising Confident Readers: How to Teach Your Child to Read—From Baby to Age 7.
Dr. Gentry joined the BrillKids Foundation team earlier this year to help with our “early education for every child” mission. Now, he will also be contributing his thoughts on early childhood education on the BrillKids Blog.
By way of introduction, we took the opportunity to conduct a written interview with Dr. Gentry for the benefit of BrillKids members:
| How did you first come across the concept of baby and toddler reading, and what were your first thoughts about it?
===================================================== |
I’ve studied beginning reading for over thirty years and have written books about how very young children learn to read in school. Although I knew many children learned to read as babies and toddlers before entering school, there is little research on 2- and 3-year-old readers and I had not worked with them, so like most reading professors and researchers, baby/toddler reading was an academic blind spot. After being invited to write a book for parents about raising readers, my first thoughts were “Get to work!” I had waited too long to investigate this important topic. It took me three years to write the book!
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It’s been quite a while since my last blog post. In fact, over the past few months, I haven’t even been able to be very active on the Forums either.
What have we been up to? Quite a lot!
US Infomercial
The main thing that has been occupying my time, since the beginning of this year, actually, is the production of a 30-minute infomercial on Little Reader, for the US market. I’m happy to announce that it’s just been launched, and we just finished our first week of test airings! As we continue to make adjustments to the show and re-test it, those of you in the US and Canada might see the show on and off over the next few months.
For those of you interested to see the show, here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmKyiTGvSp4
(This is an edited version with repeated segments removed.)
I also talked about the testimonials that
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As promised in an earlier blog post (Why I Avoid Classical Piano Teaching For My Daughter), here is an update on Little Musician.
Over the recent weeks, we’ve been working feverishly hard to get this out. One reason Little Musician has taken so long is that we kept wanting to add more features to it to enhance the experience.
Although I was a classically trained pianist many years ago, I’ve been learning a lot of new things about music education over the years, and the more I learned, the more I felt compelled to add new features to Little Musician. We’ve now got to a stage where I’m very happy with the features we have in it, and I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel!
Here are some of the key features:
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