Preschool Day Research Articles

Physical activity in overweight and nonoverweight preschool children

To compare the physical activity levels of overweight and non overweight 3- to 5-y-old children while attending preschool. A secondary aim was to evaluate weight-related differences in hypothesized parental determinants of child physical activity behavior. Cross-sectional study. A total of 245, 3- to 5-y-olds (127 girls, 118 boys) and their parent(s) (242 mothers, 173 fathers) recruited from nine preschools. Overweight status determined using the age- and sex-specific 85th percentile for body mass index (BMI) from CDC Growth Charts. Physical activity during the preschool day was assessed on multiple days via two independent objective measures-direct observation using the observation system for recording activity in preschools (OSRAP) and real-time accelerometry using the MTI/CSA 7164 accelerometer. Parents completed a take-home survey assessing sociodemographic information, parental height and weight, modeling of physical activity, support for physical activity, active toys and sporting equipment at home, child's television watching, frequency of park visitation, and perceptions of child competence. Overweight boys were significantly less active than their nonoverweight peers during the preschool day. No significant differences were observed in girls. Despite a strong association between childhood overweight status and parental obesity, no significant differences were observed for the hypothesized parental influences on physical activity behavior. Our results suggest that a significant proportion of overweight children may be at increased risk for further gains in adiposity because of low levels of physical activity during the preschool day.

Chinese Early Childhood Educators’ Perspectives

To study changing beliefs about early childhood education, educators in Beijing were asked to discuss a 20-minute video of a typical day in a Beijing preschool. This paper focuses on reactions to a segment in the video where a teacher, Ms Chang, speaks harshly to a four-year-old girl who cries throughout breakfast. The preservice educators who commented on the videotapeon the whole were unsurprised by and supportive of Ms Chang’s approach to dealing with a crying child. In contrast, the inservice teachers expressed surprise and indignation. The experts (professors and graduate students in early childhood education) were also generally critical, but they saw Ms Chang’s approach as symptomatic of an emphasis on control that remains common even in an era that emphasizes respect for children, creativityand freedom. These disparate reactions expose the tensions and contradictions facing Chinese early childhood educators as they struggle to maintain cultural values while preparing children to compete in the global capitalist economy.

A Non-Medical Approach to Dealing With HYPERACTIVITY in Adolescent Students

t was biology class in the third block of the day and brief instructions were being given by the teacher regarding the staining of tissue for microscopic examination. Sixteen year old Tony waited impatiently, drumming hisfingers and shifting from side to side. He peered through the eyepiece of his microscope and twisted the adjustment knobs rapidly. He scowled at the teacher asking when he could start. Without responding, the teacher continued explaining, and Tony returned to looking at nothing, turning the knobs furiously. He excitedly announced he had found a red hot spring through the scope! The teacher sighed, said it was the bulb filament, and concluded the instructions. Tony sprang from his seat, knocked over a bottle of stain, and rushed to the sinkfor water and paper towels. Tony's lab partner covered his eyes in frustration. Most biology teachers have encountered such students in their classes. They are usually labeled troublemakers, problem students, or antisocial. When consulted, the parents explain that their son or daughter has always been that way, even in pre-school days. As children in elementary school they were diagnosed as being hyperactive, but the parents were told that they would outgrow it. Nevertheless, here they are, active as ever in the 10th grade. The question is, Should they still be considered hyperactive as secondary students in the 10th grade, and how can they be helped?

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IN OVERWEIGHT AND NON-OVERWEIGHT PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN

OBJECTIVE To compare the physical activity levels of overweight and non overweight 3- to 5-y-old children while attending preschool. A secondary aim was to evaluate weight-related differences in hypothesized parental determinants of child physical activity behavior. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. SUBJECTS A total of 245, 3- to 5-y-olds (127 girls, 118 boys) and their parent(s) (242 mothers, 173 fathers) recruited from nine preschools. Overweight status determined using the age- and sex-specific 85th percentile for body mass index (BMI) from CDC Growth Charts. MEASUREMENTS Physical activity during the preschool day was assessed on multiple days via two independent objective measuresFdirect observation using the observation system for recording activity in preschools (OSRAP) and real-time accelerometry using the MTI/CSA 7164 accelerometer. Parents completed a take-home survey assessing sociodemographic information, parental height and weight, modeling of physical activity, support for physical activity, active toys and sporting equipment at home, child’s television watching, frequency of park visitation, and perceptions of child competence. RESULTS Overweight boys were significantly less active than their nonoverweight peers during the preschool day. No significant differences were observed in girls. Despite a strong association between childhood overweight status and parental obesity, no significant differences were observed for the hypothesized parental influences on physical activity behavior. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that a significant proportion of overweight children may be at increased risk for further gains in adiposity because of low levels of physical activity during the preschool day.

Is It Time to Look Beyond Teachers' Signing Behavior?

Since the 1970s classrooms and programs for deaf students have evolved from the exclusive reliance on oral/auditory methods to combined methods of speech and English-based signing and bilingual methods that include the use of American Sign Language (ASL). Today there are many deaf students who have signed throughout their school years, and it is no longer unusual to find deaf graduates with hearing parents who have signed to them since their preschool days. In spite of all of these changes, we have seen little change in the academic abilities and in particular the literacy abilities of deaf children (Moores 2001; Paul 1998).

Personal accounts: memoirs of a compulsive firesetter.

Personal accounts: memoirs of a compulsive firesetter.

Shifting Ethnicities: ‘Native Informants’ and other Theories from/for Early Childhood Education

This article presents and deconstructs discourses of being ‘white’, being ‘other’, being ‘foreign’ and being ‘native’, with local examples from early childhood education events, sites and documentations. Working theoretically (after Spivak) and via subjectively told anecdotes and narratives, a postmodern theory of shifting ethnicities emerges. For hybridity and diaspora in early childhoods and later adulthoods, the modernist and colonial notion of singular and even binary ethnicity is unfixed. The work begins from interview data with ‘bilingual assistants' in pre-school day care centres in Norway.

High Quality Early Literacy Programs

There is an increasing recognition of the importance of literacy learning in the years before school. Key principles of high quality literacy programs for young children have been developed as the result of a recent study of 79 preschool and long day care centres in New South Wales. These principles include communicating with families about literacy, building on children's home experiences, planning to support individual literacy needs, integrating literacy experiences across the curriculum, and adult—child interactions that scaffold literacy understandings.

Infections and vaccinations as risk factors for childhood type I (insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus: a multicentre case-control investigation. EURODIAB Substudy 2 Study Group.

To determine if vaccinations and infections are associated with the subsequent risk of Type I (insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus in childhood. Seven centres in Europe with access to population-based registers of children with Type I diabetes diagnosed under 15 years of age participated in a case-control study of environmental risk factors. Control children were chosen at random in each centre either from population registers or from schools and policlinics. Data on maternal and neonatal infections, common childhood infections and vaccinations were obtained for 900 cases and 2302 control children from hospital and clinic records and from parental responses to a questionnaire or interview. Infections early in the child's life noted in the hospital record were found to be associated with an increased risk of diabetes, although the odds ratio of 1.61 (95% confidence limits 1.11, 2.33) was significant only after adjustment for confounding variables. None of the common childhood infectious diseases was found to be associated with diabetes and neither was there evidence that any common childhood vaccination modified the risk of diabetes. Pre-school day-care attendance, a proxy measure for total infectious disease exposure in early childhood, was found, however, to be inversely associated with diabetes, with a pooled odds ratio of 0.59 (95% confidence limits 0.46, 0.76) after adjustment for confounding variables. It seems likely that the explanation for these contrasting findings of an increased risk associated with perinatal infections coupled with a protective effect of pre-school day care lies in the age-dependent modifying influence of infections on the developing immune system.

Academic progress of children who attended a preschool for abused children: a follow-up of the keepsafe project

Objective: This study was undertaken to assess academic progress of children 1 to 5 years after graduating from the C. Henry Kempe Center’s Therapeutic Preschool Day Treatment Program. Method: Information was gathered through chart review; telephone surveys of care providers, relatives, and social service workers; as well questionnaires on all children who attended the therapeutic preschool day treatment program between 1984 and 1989, including the 24 children reported on by Oates, Gray, Schweitzer, Kempe, and Harmon, 1995. Results: Classroom placement was determined for 27 of the 44 graduates (61.4%), 14 of whom (51.9%) were in a regular classroom, 10 (37.0%) in special education, two (7.4%) in residential treatment, and one (3.7%) was receiving home schooling. Twenty-two of the 27 children (81.5%) improved or remained in the same grade and type of classroom as they had been staffed into at the time of their graduation from the preschool day treatment program. Factors thought to affect stability of classroom placement were studied, of which frequency of family moves was the only significant variable. Its significance was in the direction opposite to that expected. The most effective method of locating families was to contact the Department of Social Services who provided information used to find 60% of them. Conclusions: Intervention in a therapeutic preschool day treatment program was found to be beneficial, as it enabled most of the children to progress appropriately in public school.

Food Safety in Infant and Preschool Day Care

Infants, toddlers, and preschool-aged children cared for outside the home comprise one of the fastest growing child initiatives in the United States. Concerns are frequently raised about the quality of child care services provided to these children, particularly how well the health, social, and emotional well-being of young children are safeguarded. The safe handling of food in the context of developmentally and nutritionally appropriate feeding guidelines for infants, toddlers, and preschool-aged children are discussed.

Looking Back: Early Adolescents’ Recollections of their Preschool Day Care Experiences

Sixty children and their families who had participated in the Victoria Day Care Research Project in the early 1980s were located and agreed to participate in a follow‐up to that study in the early 1990s. Now in their adolescence, these young people completed a range of developmental measures and agreed to be interviewed regarding their caregiving experiences ten years earlier. Findings from one of the key questions in that interview are provided in this report, a unique restrospective view of life in child care.

Talk about preschool: Patterns of topic discussion and elaboration related to gender and ethnicity

Sixty-six mothers and their 4-year-old children recorded conversations about the children's experiences during a typical preschool day. Each dyad's ethnic background was either Hispanic or Anglo, with similar numbers of mother—daughter and mother—son pairs represented in each ethnic group. Both low- and middle-income dyads participated. The mother—child conversations were analyzed in order to identify the dyads' tendencies to elaborate on discussions of aspects of the school day related to learning, other individuals, and behavioral conduct as a function of the ethnicity of the dyad and the gender of the child. Gender of child was associated with dyads' propensities to devote differing percentages of their total conversational utterances to the discussion of other individuals and behavioral conduct, and interacted with ethnicity to produce different patterns of discussion related to the topic of learning. Mothers of boys used more elaborative utterances in their discussion of learning-related topics than did mothers of girls. Possible implications of these results for children's subsequent school-related attitudes and performance are discussed.

Language interaction techniques for stimulating the development of at risk children in infant and preschool day care

It is often assumed that children's language will develop normally in the average, “good” day care and home environments. In fact teachers and parents from all social backgrounds vary widely in the quality of language interaction they furnish to children in the early years. These variations, moreover, are highly correlated with how well children develop language and other skills. Over a series of research projects in both day care and the home, principles and methods have been devised that have been shown to enable both normal and at risk young children to develop high and long‐lasting competencies in language and other cognitive and social skills. The approach centers on engaging the whole child to interact with language informally in play and the ordinary routines of child care, both individually and in small groups, and emphasizing both the social, communicative and cognitive functions of language. A variety of specific techniques for use in day care are described and illustrated with several successful cases with at risk children.

Early child care experiences and their association with family and child characteristics during middle childhood

Long-term correlates of early child care and maternal employment were examined in a representative sample of 333 6- to 12-year-old middle-class children. Intellectual, social, and behavioral development and parent-child relationships were related to nonparental infant care, center or preschool experiences, and maternal employment. Contextual analyses included child, parent, and family covariates related to choice of child care and children's development. Preschool and center day care was associated with slightly higher Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) Vocabulary scores and externalizing t scores on the Child Behavior Checklist. In addition, for African American children, center preschool experience was associated with 10-point-higher verbal intelligence scores and better ratings of positive behavioral attributes by parent and observers. Nonparental care during infancy and maternal employment patterns during the preschool years were not consistently related to the outcomes. The results of this study further support the growing consensus that the effects of early child care experiences must be considered in the context of parent, family, and child characteristics.

Parents' selections of proprietary day care centers for their school-age children: A study of three southeastern University Communities

A sample of 145 parents whose 5- to 12-year-old children attended one of 25 profit-making day care centers located in three southeastern states completed a questionnaire designed to determine how and why they selected day care for their school-age children. Results revealed that the typical parent visited two or three centers, including the one they ultimately selected, before making a choice. Parents' most common first source of information about day care came from friends; very few first obtained information from child development specialists, licensers, or doctors. Across the three communities, the parents' rank-ordered reasons for selecting day care were strikingly similar. Health and safety, caregiver quality, the child's social development, and the child's educational development were the most important considerations; cost was the least important consideration. In contrast to earlier research with a preschool sample, no demographic or day care selection variables were associated reliably with selecting better quality day care by these parents. Follow-up telephone interviews with 28 parents yielded several possible factors that could have operated to minimize the prediction of quality day care in the present study.

Behind the playground walls: sexual abuse in preschools

Representing over 6 years of research with children reporting nonritualistic and ritualistic sexual abuse in preschool settings, BEHIND THE PLAYGROUND WALLS is a clear, comprehensive examination of the effects of reported molestation on young children and their families. Based on data gathered from the children, parents, and therapists in a comparison study, the book covers the effects on children's behavior, fears, PTSD symptoms, sexuality, achievement, school performance, and self-concept. Moreover, the ways in which the children and their families coped with reports of abuse and the factors associated with positive short- and long-term outcome are detailed. Part I of the book outlines the scope of the problem. Cases from two communities - alleged ritualistic abuse in several preschools in Manhattan Beach, California, and nonritualistic abuse in a preschool day care setting in Reno, Nevada - are described and compared with a control group of nonabused children from southern California. The background literature is reviewed, as are the methods, procedures, and limitations of the study. Chapters in Part II offer perspectives on what happened to the children and the patterns of disclosure in therapy. Part III concentrates on the aftermath of such cases, with separate chapters on the children's overall levels of distress and cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, sexual, and school-related effects. The impact of sexual abuse on the children's parents, families, and therapists is discussed in Part IV. Factors that were associated with positive outcome for the children, both in the short term and at follow-up 5 years after initial disclosure, are then covered in Part V. Rounding out thevolume, Part VI presents community and research perspectives on the findings by well-known child abuse experts, and concludes with the authors' recommendations for treatment. Offering important new insights on a timely and critical topic, BEHIND THE PLAYGROUND WALLS is valuable reading

Day care for early preschool children: implications for the child and family. American Psychiatric Association Task Force on Day Care for Pre-School Children.

The use of nonparental day care for children has increased over the past several decades and mirrors changes in the social and economic fabric of the United States. In the case of the early preschool child, precise understanding of the implications of day care for later development remains elusive. Of equal concern are the implications of early preschool day care for the family unit and especially the mother. What constitutes appropriate, safe, and affordable day care has been debated. The impact of poor care is demonstrable for both the child and family. Quality day care offers the potential for positive psychological development of the child and the family. The research related to day care for young children has expanded our knowledge of child development, but it also highlights a need for expanded research using refined measures of psychological growth and child-parent interaction. This report was approved by the APA Board of Trustees in December 1992.

Using Peers to Promote the Social Interaction of Withdrawn Children in a Natural Preschool Setting

Abstract The peer social initiation approach was used to increase the social interaction of three withdrawn children with special needs with their nondisabled age-mates in the regular preschool environment. The treatment sessions were designed to be as natural as possible with respect to normal routines of the day in preschool. The results revealed a substantial increase in positive social interaction between the children during the treatment sessions. The effect was maintained during the fading phase and the follow-up phase of one week. The results are discussed in terms of achieving generalization of the effects.

Factors influencing competence with preschoolers and their professional caretakers: Results on data-analysis and on implementation in senior secondary personal and social services and health care education

SUMMARY In this study, components influencing competence of preschoolers and their professional caretakers have been explored. Twelve caretakers of both preschool day-care and day nursery carried out a Classification Task with three preschoolers each. In all 35 preschoolers participated, aged 2.8 to 3.6 years. The standardised task situation was videotaped. Results reveal overall differences between care-conditions being amount of Social Support, Helping Behaviour, Regulative Behaviour and Judgment of Learning Behaviour and Language Development. Competence in the task situations was not predicted by intelligence. Helping Behaviour of both preschoolers and caretakers was more frequent with boys. Senior Secondary Personal and Social Services and Health Care Education successfully implemented research findings. Implementing activities consisted of discussing topics on professional attitude of caretakers; presenting the instruments used in our study and developing a videotape to be used during in-service trai...