I came across this site and was relieved to see EL being backed by research and publicized. Of course, the trail that brought me here was thanks to the state of WA, which has a huge upperhand thanks to the bill and melinda gates foundation pumping over 10M towards paving the way, along with others who jumped on board to help the cause. Way to go WA.
Here are the links, along with some neat videos: http://www.parentingcounts.org/information/timeline/can-perform-simple-addition-and-subtraction-exercises-5-10-months/ and http://www.parentingcounts.org/information/timeline/#tab-learning.
Anybody in WA care to share what the EL environment is like? It seems like it’s heading towards being mainstream. Yay, nay? Not in WA - what’s it like where you are?
It’s interesting that our government seems OK to admit babies are born ready for math but still won’t admit they can learn to read too! In Queensland I recently received a letter from my government promoting daycare/kindergarten and quality early learning experiences. It stated babies are born ready to do math, encouraged reading to children… Anyway I must say I was surprised. It certainly hasn’t filtered down into practice. Well perhaps that’s not quite true. At my sons kindy they were doing flash cards of number dots…but it was only to ten ( of which they mostly only did 1-5) and they were too small. I think the problem is a complete lack of training. I did a university degree in early childhood teaching and not once did we learn anything about anything on this site! I have noticed a remarked increase in daycares offering a class per week in a second language. We have a long way to go before it hits mainstream.
May I add the only way this “movement” will ever go mainstream is if less of us hide in the closet and more of us talk about our experiences public ally. Yes I know it often involves ridicule but the future kids of the world need our loud and proud voices!