Home Learning Experiences Improve School Readiness

The study, which was conducted by researchers at New York University and appeared in the journal Child Development, looked at more than 1,850 children and their mothers with household incomes at or below the federal poverty line.

When the children were approximately 1, 2, 3 and 5 years old, researchers made home visits and gathered information on how often children took part in literacy activities (such as reading with a parent), the quality of mothers' engagements with their children (such as children's exposure to frequent and varied adult speech), and the availability of learning materials, including children's books.

The researchers calculated a learning environment score at each age and measured the number of words the children understood and their knowledge of letters and words at age 5. They found that 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.

"Our findings indicate that enriched learning experiences as early as the first year of life are important to children's vocabulary growth, which in turn provides a foundation for children's later school success," Eileen Rodriguez, who led the study, said in a news release from the Society for Research in Child Development.

The researchers also found that children's cognitive ability as infants, mothers' race and ethnicity, education and employment and a family's household income predicted the course of children's early learning environments.

The study's authors say more resources should be made available to help families provide better learning experiences for their children at home, such as efforts to promote literacy behaviors starting as early as the first year of life.

"Interventions early on may set families on an altered trajectory of support if families are supported in their efforts to engage children in routine literacy activities, interact with children in supportive ways, and provide children opportunities to learn about their worlds through educational materials," according to Rodriguez.

Be sure to visit the Read Early, Read Aloud website for more tips and resources that encourage families to read together.