Home learning boosts kindergarten readiness

Home learning experiences such as reading books with parents can improve low-income preschool children's readiness to start school.

Researchers studied 1,852 American children and their mothers in families with household incomes at or below the federal poverty line. During home visits when the children were aged 1, 2, 3 and 5 years, the New York University researchers looked at how often the children took part in literary activities (such as shared book reading), the quality of the mothers' interactions with their children (such as exposing children to frequent and varied adult speech), and the availability of learning materials, including children's books.

The researchers also assessed the number of words the children understood and their knowledge of letters and words at age 5. Differences in the children's home learning environment predicted their readiness to start school. For example, children whose home learning environment scores were consistently low were much more likely to have delays in language and literacy skills at pre-kindergarten than children who had high home learning scores.

It was also found that the course of a child's early learning experiences were predicted by: children's mental abilities as infants; mothers' race and ethnicity, education and employment; and a family's household income.

These findings indicate that enriched learning experiences as early as the first year of life are important to children's language development, which in turn provides a foundation for children's later school success.

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