Young children with developmental disabilities often demonstrate delays in learning important early literacy skills, and are often at a higher risk for future reading problems. This study asks: to what extent are there differences in the home-literacy experiences of children with and without disabilities, and how are these experiences related to children’s early literacy skills?

Who preschoolers choose to interact with most frequently can have a significant impact on their development of social and emotional skills, and emergent language and literacy skills. This study asks, “Do rural preschoolers interact most often with peers who share similar characteristics or skills, such as learning-related behaviors, and language and literacy skills?”

Our workshops, seminars and key events help researchers, policy makers, practitioners, and families enhance their skills to support young children by: offering valuable early childhood professional development experiences;
providing opportunities for the university and greater community to learn about topics related to children’s learning and development; bringing renowned speakers and experts together to discuss matters related to children’s well-being.

This book is an essential guide for those many individuals who serve as children’s first teachers and who understand, as we do, that interactive book reading is an important context for helping children learn and develop.

For more than 10 years, our research team has examined ways to facilitate emergent literacy development in young children in ways that explicitly foster children’s engagement with print. This book was written to provide the community with materials generated through several federally funded studies that investigate ways to increase the emergent literacy skills.

Funded by the Kellogg Foundation, The SOLYLUNA Book Reading Club promotes families’ access to books for young children in an area of high illiteracy in Mexico. Workshops and materials are currently being developed and shared across Mayan villages in Yucatan State in a collaboration between the Crane Center and Solyluna School in Merida, Mexico.

1,200 children in four states were followed longitudinally over five years in a LAARC study designed to substantially increase our understanding of language- and reading-comprehension development for children from pre-kindergarten to third grade. During the study, the LARRC team also developed a 25-week curriculum supplement designed to improve language skills to improve reading comprehension.