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The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) is the nation’s largest organization of early childhood professionals and others dedicated to improving the quality of early childhood education programs for children birth through age eight. NAEYC’s primary goals are to improve professional practice and working conditions in early childhood education and to build public understanding and support for high-quality early childhood programs.

• Every Child Belongs: Welcoming a Child with a Disability May 2019
• 10 Things Every Parent Should Know About Play Oct 2018
• 12 Ways to Support Language Development for Infants and Toddlers

• Additional NAEYC Resources
  • The Word Gap: The Early Years Make a Difference
    A recent study shows that children’s vocabulary skills are linked to their economic backgrounds. This article explain the study and give 9 recommendations for early care and education providers on how they can close “the word gap”.
  • Position Statements including the DEC/NAEYC Joint Statement on Early Childhood Inclusion

  Cultural Competency & Family Engagement

  • The First Step for Addressing Bias is Infant and Toddler Programs, Young Children, November 2017
  • Moving Beyond Anti-Bias Activities: Supporting the Development of Anti-Bias Practices
  • Cultural Competence
    Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) Implementation
  • Engaging Diverse Families
    Engaging Diverse Families (EDF) is helping early childhood education programs effectively engage diverse families. Our goal is to learn how excellent early childhood education programs are effectively engaging diverse families and to share what we learn with other programs struggling to start and sustain family engagement practices.
  • I Dream of the Day
    Isauro Michael Escamilla, M.A., an Early Childhood Education Teacher Researcher from the San Francisco Unified School District, spoke at the closing session of NAEYC’s Institute for Professional Development in San Francisco this year. Here is a particularly moving excerpt.

  Healthy Mind, Health Body

  • The Word Gap: The Early Years Make a Difference
    A recent study shows that children’s vocabulary skills are linked to their economic backgrounds. This article explain the study and give 9 recommendations for early care and education providers on how they can close “the word gap”.
  • Position Statements including the DEC/NAEYC Joint Statement on Early Childhood Inclusion
  • Big Body Play: Why Boisterous, Vigorous, and Very Physical Play Is Essential to Children’s Development and Learning
    A book on encouraging physical activity for children, by Frances M. Carlson.
  • Increasing Children’s Physical Activity (PDF)
  • Our Collection of Children’s Songs
    • 10 Ways Baby’s Learn When We Sing to Them
      Listening skills, new words, and so much more
    • Playing with Music at Home
      Tips to explore music and connect it to children’s learning

  Policy/Trends

  • Public Policy Overview
    NAEYC promotes national, state and local public policies that support a system of well-financed, high quality early childhood education programs in a range of settings, including child care centers, family child care homes, and schools.

  Social-Emotional & Behavior

  • Promoting Social–Emotional Development: Helping Infants Learn About Feelings (PDF)
    Starting from birth, infants begin learning how to make sense of their world through interactions with caregivers. Responsive caregiving-which involves caregiver reflecting and validating a child’s feelings and behaviors-help very young children makes sense of their world. Over time, children who have this type of nurturing, reflective care better regulates their emotions.
  • 10 Tips for Raising a Compassionate Toddler
    Recent research shows that infants and toddlers are far more empathetic than we once thought.  While they have short fuses, and don’t cope well with sharing, they are capable of being compassionate.  With this in mind, here are ten tips I use in the classroom to help infants and toddlers become pro-social that families can also try at home.
  • NAEYC Radio
    NAEYC and BAM Radio Network partnered to bring NAEYC Radio. The program was developed to bring the best and latest insights on early childhood education directly to parents and educators.
  • 10 tips for Raising a Compassionate Infant Toddler
  • Helping Infants Learn About Feelings (PDF)
  • Standing Together Against Suspension and Expulsion Joint Policy Statement (PDF)
    A group of more than 30 national organizations recently published a joint statement, Standing Together Against Suspension and Expulsion in Early Childhood: A Joint Statement (April 2016), which supports the recommendations from the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human services in their December 2014 Joint Policy Statement on Expulsion and Suspension. The organizations have also compiled a number of related resources to help states, districts, communities, and classrooms prevent, limit, and ultimately eliminate suspension and expulsion in early childhood education.
  • Caring Relationships: The Heart of Early Brain Development By Ron Lally and Peter Mangione