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“Grammy, the geese came back!” my four-year-old granddaughter exclaimed in a recent phone conversation. And while I am always delighted to talk with her, I was especially pleased to hear her story about seeing the geese this autumn. The story she told made it clear that her oral language abilities have reached a level that […]

What do children need to know as preschoolers to set them on the path toward high academic achievement? Do the children who know the most letters and letter sounds when they start kindergarten excel in reading later on, or are other kinds of early knowledge more important? Newly published findings from the first nationally representative […]

Think back to your favorite summer experiences as a young child. My grown children would probably tell you about camp, the beach and family vacations. It’s not likely that they, or you, would put summer reading high their list of special summer memories. And yet, one of the most important things we can do for […]

By Joan Firestone, Ph.D. Spring has finally made it to my neighborhood.  And while parents are busy getting out the tricycles and patio furniture, they are also contemplating the perennial question of what to do with the kids when the school year ends. It might well be that the best answer is to enroll them […]

By Joan Firestone, Ph.D. No parent wants their child to become a bully or the victim of a bully. But bullying continues to be a dominant safety issue in our schools and communities. It is, in fact, the most common form of violence in our society, and between 15 and 30 percent of public school […]

By Dr. Joan Lessen-Fireston, Ph.D. Kindergarten teachers often worry about inadequate fine motor skills exhibited by many of their students. Every year it seems that more children enter school unable to cut along a straight line, manipulate buttons and snaps, and comfortably hold and use a pencil. But in a time when we focus on […]

By Joan Lessen-Firestone, Ph.D. Marshmallows played a central role in a classic study of young children’s ability to control their impulses and regulate their behavior. Four-year-olds were given the choice of eating one marshmallow immediately or waiting about fifteen minutes to get two. Not surprisingly, only about a third of the children were able to […]

A study finds that young children who had more early reading knowledge were slightly better readers when they entered middle school, but preschoolers’ general knowledge of the world was found to be a much stronger predictor of their later success in reading.