Have you heard about the cuts to early learning in Gov Dunleavy’s proposed FY 2020 budget? It zeroes out funding for the following: Parents as Teachers home visiting program PreK grants to school districts Head Start matching funds to receive federal dollars Best Beginnings Let’s just look at Best Beginnings’ funding. Best Beginnings receives $320,000 Read More
Empowering Parents with Information
Parents of young children today can be overwhelmed by the plethora of information available to them on virtually every aspect of child development and being a parent. When my children were babies, 40 years ago, my friends and I had Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care and each other. Sometimes we asked our mothers for Read More
Books as Holiday Gifts – and More
During the holidays, children’s books can be a wonderful gift AND provide some much-needed respite from the holiday rush, for children and their parents. We often spend a lot of time and energy looking for that special toy for our child, but how about replacing that toy with a book? Many toys these days seem Read More
Being Thankful For You
During the Thanksgiving holiday, there’s a lot written and discussed about gratitude, why it’s an important quality to nurture, and that we as parents should be intentional about instilling that quality in our children. I don’t disagree. A lot of parents of young children wrestle with how best to help their children both feel and Read More
Early Literacy in Everyday Places
“People told me to talk to my baby when we went to places like the grocery store,” a first-time mother said. “But I didn’t know what that actually looked like, until I watched Babies on Track and saw a parent really doing that. Now I know what to do.” Many of us feel like we’re in Read More
Talk That Lasts
Once again, research is catching up to what parents, grandparents, and other caring adults in a child’s life know – positive interactions between adult and young child have a lasting impact. LENA researchers have recently released a paper, “Language Experience in the Second Year of Life and Language Outcomes in Late Childhood,” that confirms what Read More
Sticking To It
Many of us pride ourselves on being multi-taskers. We believe we can get more things checked off our task list if we do several of them at the same time. In the workplace, that’s generally by choice. At home with children, especially at certain times of the day, being able to multi-task seems a necessity! Science Read More
Social-Emotional Skills for Life
We all want our young children to get along with other kids and adults, to follow directions, and to behave appropriately, especially in public! We know instinctively having these qualities and skills will make life smoother for them, at home, at school, with their friends. But did you know these qualities and skills are precisely Read More
Preparing for Kindergarten
Is your child one in 10,000? This August, about 10,000 Alaska children will enter kindergarten, the beginning of their formal school years. Will your child be one of that group of 10,000? When children enrolled in Imagination Library turn 5, their last book is Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come! Many parents send us photos of Read More
We Know Where We’re Headed
You are probably familiar with this old saying: if you don’t know where you’re headed, any path will take you there. Here at Best Beginnings, we have embarked on a three-year plan that definitely tells us where we are headed and lays out several paths to get us there! From FY 2018-FY 2020, Best Beginnings Read More
