Early learning and child care (ELCC) settings in Canada follow nutrition standards that outline food provisions, with many also encouraging responsive feeding practices that help to create a supportive environment for children. Caregivers who lack confidence in children\'s ability to regulate their own intake, or those who feel stressed about mealtime, may unknowingly engage in less responsive feeding practices. The CELEBRATE Feeding Approach is a flexible framework, driven by behaviour change theory, that builds on previous definitions and concepts of responsive feeding in ELCC environments. Through this approach, there is an intentional focus on supporting early childhood educators to implement feeding practices that are more responsive. The approach incorporates 13 target educator behaviours related to the three overlapping categories of CELEBRATE language, CELEBRATE Mealtime, and CELEBRATE Play. These practices recognize and support the development of a child\'s sense of autonomy, confidence, and self-regulation not only at mealtimes but also through play-based exploration and language that is used throughout the day around food and feeding. The goal is that children will be open to a wide variety of food, develop their self-regulation skills, and build the foundation for a positive relationship with food throughout their lifetime.

Informal learning spaces present ripe opportunities to supplement formal learning experiences. In this paper, we offer a new approach to creating enriching learning activities for public spaces that reflects evidence-based practices rooted in developmental psychology and uses community-centring practices from participatory research approaches. We first argue that extant theory and research supports the use of guided play pedagogy to foster learning. Second, we argue that effective translation of research to practice should incorporate community voices at every stage of the design, implementation and evaluation process. We describe a new initiative called Playful Learning Landscapes that reflects tenets of core developmental theory including constructivism and social learning theories as well as guided play pedagogy. Playful Learning Landscapes also extends the scope and scale of these evidence-backed theories by collaborating with communities to design activities for local community spaces. Taken together, we offer a way of upholding core developmental theory with equitable, culturally inclusive research and intervention practices. Transforming community spaces into hubs for children\'s learning promises wide-reaching implications for equitable access, school readiness and early childhood education.

OBJECTIVE: This study assesses change in caregiver practices after integrating responsive care and early learning (RCEL) in nutrition and health services and community platforms in northern Ghana.
METHODS: We trained health facility workers and community health volunteers to deliver RCEL counselling to caregivers of children under 2 years of age through existing health facilities and community groups. We assessed changes in caregivers\' RCEL practices before and after the intervention with a household questionnaire and caregiver-child observations.
METHODS: The study took place in Sagnarigu, Gushegu, Wa East and Mamprugu-Moagduri districts from April 2022 to March 2023. Study sites included seventy-nine child welfare clinics (CWC) at Ghana Health Service facilities and eighty village savings and loan association (VSLA) groups.
METHODS: We enrolled 211 adult caregivers in the study sites who had children 0-23 months at baseline and were enrolled in a CWC or a VSLA.
RESULTS: We observed improvements in RCEL and infant and young child feeding practices, opportunities for early learning (e.g. access to books and playthings) in the home environment and reductions in parental stress.
CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates the effectiveness of integrating RCEL content into existing nutrition and health services. The findings can be used to develop, enhance and advocate for policies integrating RCEL into existing services and platforms in Ghana. Future research may explore the relationship between positive changes in caregiver behaviour and improvements in child development outcomes as well as strategies for enhancing paternal engagement in care practices, improving child supervision and ensuring an enabling environment.

Despite major improvements in child survival over the past decade, many children in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) remain at risk of not reaching their developmental potential due to malnutrition, poor health, and a lack of stimulation. Maternal engagement and stimulation have been identified as some of the most critical inputs for healthy development of children. However, relatively little evidence exists on the links between maternal stimulation and child development exists in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This current paper aims to identify the associations between maternal stimulation and child development in Kenya and Zambia, as well as the activities that are most predictive of developmental outcomes in these settings.
We conducted a descriptive study using data from a prospective study in Kenya and Zambia. The study included three rounds of data collection. Children were on average 10 months old in round one, 25 months old in round two, and 36 months old in round three. The primary exposure variable of interest was maternal stimulation activities, which we grouped into cognitive, language, motor, and socio-emotional activities. The outcome of interest was child development measured through the Third Edition of the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ-3). Linear regression models were used to estimate the associations between overall maternal stimulation and domain-specific maternal stimulation and child development across the three rounds of the survey.
Higher maternal stimulation scores were associated with higher ASQ scores (effect size = 0.25; 95% CI: 0.19, 0.31) after adjusting for other confounders. For domain specific and child development (ASQ scores), the largest effect size (ES) was found for language stimulation (ES = 0.15) while weakest associations were found for socio-emotional domain activities (ES= -0.05). Overall maternal stimulation was most strongly associated with gross motor development (ES = 0.21) and the least associated with problem-solving (ES = 0.16).
Our study findings suggest a strong positive link between maternal stimulation activities and children\'s developmental outcomes among communities in poor rural settings.
NA (not a clinical trial).

UNASSIGNED: COVID-19-related lockdowns and preschool closures resulted in many young children spending all their time at home. Some parents had to manage child care while working from home, and increased demands may have led them to experience considerable stress. Evidence indicates that among parents with young children, those who had pre-existing mental and physical conditions adapted less well than other parents. We considered associations between parental well-being and the home learning environment for young children.
UNASSIGNED: We leveraged data from the nationally representative China Family Panel Studies. We analyzed longitudinal data collected before (2018) and during (2020) the pandemic. Participants were parents of 1,155 preschoolers (aged 3-5 years in 2020). Moderated mediation models were conducted. Maternal and paternal psychological well-being, depression, physical health, and physical illness in 2018 and 2020 were predictors. The frequency of marital and intergenerational conflicts in 2020 were mediators. Primary caregiver-reported engagement in home learning activities and family educational expenditure and parent-reported time spent on child care in 2020 were outcome variables. The number of COVID-19 cases in each province 3 months before the 2020 assessment was the moderator. Child, parental, and household characteristics and urbanicity were covariates.
UNASSIGNED: Controlling for covariates, improvements in parental psychological well-being predicted more home learning activities and increases in paternal depression predicted less time spent by fathers on child care. Negative changes in maternal physical health predicted less family educational expenditure and mothers spending more time on child care. Family conflicts mediated the association between maternal physical illness in 2018 and family educational expenditure. The number of COVID-19 cases in a province (i) was positively associated with mothers spending more time on child care, (ii) moderated the association of improvements in maternal physical health and mothers spending less time on child care, and (iii) moderated the association of family conflicts and more family educational expenditure.
UNASSIGNED: The findings indicate that decreased parental psychological and physical well-being foretells reductions in monetary and non-monetary investment in early learning and care at home. Regional pandemic risk undermines maternal investment in early learning and care, especially for those with pre-existing physical conditions.

Infants spend much of their time exploring objects (Herzberg et al., 2021), and object exploration is linked to learning and development in various domains (e.g., social, cognitive, motor). But how does exploration develop in the first place, and how, exactly, does exploration promote learning? One way to approach these process-oriented questions is with a developmental cascades perspective, which holds that new skills emerge from earlier-developing ones and that various interactions with people and objects accumulate over time to influence multiple domains of development (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010). In this chapter, we describe object exploration from a developmental cascades perspective. In Section 2, we describe typical and atypical trajectories of exploration behaviors, noting how these behaviors emerge from earlier-developing cognitive and motor skills. In Section 3, we discuss how object exploration opens the door for new types of learning opportunities. In Section 4, we discuss early experiences that may shape the development of object exploration. Altogether, we aim to convey that new developments in exploration skills are extensions of earlier-developing skills, and that seemingly insignificant exploratory behaviors (e.g., shaking a rattle) may result in numerous and varied consequences for the developing infant.

Digital technology affordance has been recognized as a social and learning tool, and the requirements for digitalizing the kindergarten curriculum have been present for decades. Digitalization in a child\'s early years can present conflict with parents, as the societal and economic demands of digitalized society for a child\'s digital technology use are in dissonance with guidelines and recommendations of health organizations that caution against preschool children\'s technology use. Kindergarten curricular reform in Slovenia was conducted in the 1990s. In this period, the use of digital learning technology and digital play for the development of children learning predispositions and early literacy was already recognized. At the time of curriculum design, it integrated some elements of digital learning technology. Now, 30 years after the design of the new curriculum, we are facing the post-digital era. Learning technology in the early years is a matter of partnership with parents; accordingly, this descriptive survey study includes a non-randomized sample of 306 parents. We are considering how child\'s play is structured in the primary environment and how parents perceive digital technology in the current post-digital age of seamless, digitally saturated social practices. Parents are aware of the risks of technology and of its benefits for learning. The findings show correlations between a child\'s digital screen technology use and parents\' attitudes and perceptions of digital play. Parents that offer digital screen technology to a child have less agreeable attitudes regarding its possible risks to a child.

Drawing from a qualitative approach and through individual pláticas (processes of co-constructing knowledge through dialogue) as a linguistic and cultural framework, this work explored informal contextual factors valued by Spanish-speaking Latina mothers of children, three to five years of age and enrolled in a nonprofit California preschool. Results revealed that Latina mothers have cultural forms of knowledge which impact their children\'s educational experiences and engage in direct and indirect numeracy environments. While personal math experiences and home practices differed, Latina mothers experience and navigate their children\'s learning based on sociocultural aspects, influencing how they support their children\'s math learning. This study drew from sociocultural learning theories that value learning embedded within meaningful learning experiences. Patterns of family learning have several implications for educational practice, especially for Latine families whose parent participation is typically not as visible as White American English-speaking parents.

Young children frequently make a peculiar counting mistake. When asked to count units that are sets of multiple items, such as the number of families at a party, they often count discrete items (i.e., individual people) rather than the number of sets (i.e., families). One explanation concerns children\'s incomplete understanding of what constitutes a unit, resulting in a preference for discrete items. Here we demonstrate that children\'s incomplete understanding of counting also plays a role. In an experiment with 4- and 5-year-old children (N = 43), we found that even if children are able to name sets, group items into sets, and create one-to-one correspondences with sets, many children are nevertheless unable to count sets as units. We conclude that a nascent understanding of the abstraction principle of counting is also a cause of some children\'s counting errors.

BACKGROUND: Fathers are often perceived to be mainly responsible for the provision of the family\'s economic needs. However, past studies have demonstrated that fathers\' involvement in parenting has great significance for the child\'s holistic growth and development. Few studies have investigated fathers\' roles in the nurturing care of young children, particularly responsive care and stimulation, in sub-Saharan Africa. The study reported here was carried out as part of a larger study that sought to evaluate the effectiveness of the Moments That Matter (MTM) program in improving the nurturing care of young children in rural communities in Zambia and Kenya. The MTM program uses a parenting empowerment approach to promote bonding and interactions between caregivers and their children within the home, focusing on responsive care, early learning, and security and safety so that children reach their full developmental potential. Trained volunteers facilitated monthly primary caregiver support and learning groups and ECD home visits. Fathers were encouraged to participate in the home visits and to attend some of the group meetings on specific topics. The study reported in this paper aimed to establish the impact of the parenting empowerment program in promoting more gender-equal attitudes and practices on parenting among fathers (who were not the primary caregivers).
METHODS: Qualitative data were collected at three time points (pre-intervention before the implementation began; mid-intervention after 6 months of implementation; and post-intervention, after 24 months). We conducted focused group discussions with primary caregivers (n = 72) and fathers (n = 24) with children below 3 years. In-depth interviews were conducted with ECD Promoters (n = 43) and faith leaders (= 20). We also conducted key informant interviews with the MTM program implementers (n = 8) and government officials (n = 5) involved in the program implementation. We employed thematic analysis to analyse the qualitative data.
RESULTS: The findings showed that the MTM program resulted in improved gender-equal parenting attitudes and practices among mothers/other primary caregivers and fathers. Study participants reported that most fathers spent more time playing and interacting with their children and were more involved in household chores due to their participation in the MTM program.
CONCLUSIONS: The study findings provide evidence for policy formulation and a guide for implementation of policies that can influence changes in perceived gender roles in parenting.