Children’s House: Early Childhood Floor

Moderator for the Early Childhood Floor in Children’s House is

Early childhood is the most rapid period of development in a human life. Although individual children develop at their own pace, all children progress through an identifiable sequence of physical, cognitive, and emotional growth and change. A child’s ability to think, form relationships, and live up to his or her full potential is directly related to the syntergistic effect of good health, good nutrition, and appropritate stimulation and interraction with others.

This site has three major resources, developed by three of the organizations of the Children’s House House Committee:

The World Bank’s ABC for ECD is a knowledge base on Early Child Development designed to assist task managers, practitioners, program designers, and decision makers in their efforts to promote the healthy growth and development of children from birth to age eight. The four sections deal with what early childhood development (ECD) is and the theory underlying its techniques and programs, which benefits are gained from ECD interventions, how to design and run an ECD program and evaluate its efficacy, and how to do a cost-benefit analysis of an ECD program. Each of the four main sections contains an introduction, a sub-menu linking to further information, and links to related Internet sites.

UNESCO’s

Early Childhood and Family Education Activities site is a

comprehensive web site that focus on Early Childhood Education in

general, and UNESCO`s activities in this field in particular. UNESCO

undertakes actions in the area of Early Childhood and Family Education,

Training of Early Childhood Personnel, Early Childhood

Information/Documentation and Networking and Promotion of Early

Childhood Research. The site also provides information on regional

indicators, publications and programs.

The Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development’s site contains an Introduction to International Early Childhood Care and Development, Arguments in Support of ECCD, Benefits of Early Childhood Programs, Complementary ECCD Programming Strategies, The Costs and Affordability of Early Childhood Care and Development Programs and Financing Early Childhood Programs.

It also contains several basic documents prepared for the Education for All Mid-Decade Summit in Amman, Jordan. Finally the site provides links to several related Internet sites.