Remember this little one?

It's still true today. Thank you.

What's on your mind?

"According to neuroscience and child development research, brain development proceeds at a faster pace between conception and the first day of kindergarten than during any subsequent stage of life. In the early years, basic capacities such as trust, self-confidence, empathy, and curiosity are established. How people think, learn, reason, and relate to others throughout their lives is rooted in their early relationships, experiences, and environments."

Common Vision, Different Paths: Five States' Journeys toward Comprehensive Prenatal-to-Five Systems"

One clarification: Research like this isn't meant to crank up the guilt factor for parents. It's meant to inform the people who are making the the public policy and academic decisions that will affect children who don't have immediate access to a loving, nurturing environment.

Do books still matter?

What Makes a Shadow, originally uploaded by xtinalamb.

"We’re just not going to be reading for text anymore,” said Saveri, the Institute for the Future researcher. “We’re going to be ‘reading’ for movies, graphics, images, digital stories, symbols,” she says. “You may say young people aren’t reading the classics, but 20 years from now, there might be some classic multimedia pieces with video, with hyperlinks. That’s the new edge of literacy.”

Saveri suggests parents blog with their kids, make a YouTube video, jump into the new media - and take books along. “We’ve got to get over our nostalgia,” she says. “Denying your child a rich media world is doing your child a disservice.”

Do books still matter?

Super Silver Snowflake

Step-by-step instructions here. Thank you swissmiss.