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Manitoba Child Care Program launches Early Returns: Manitoba’s Early Learning and Child Care Curriculum Framework for Preschool Centres and Nursery Schools. This curriculum framework supports staff to develop, describe and enhance their curriculum.

Excerpt: "All children need supports to achieve their optimal development. All young children need parenting, peer interaction, and educational opportunities in order to develop social skills, language, physical and cognitive competence. For many children with disabilities, this also includes early intervention strategies that might come from medical and clinical intervention, therapeutic interventions and/or family supports that increase resilience where there are risk factors for children and their families..."

Province-wide online resource and child care registry allows parents to find out about, and register for child care options, including licensed child care centres, home child care and nursery schools. Manitobaparentzone.ca also provides parenting and child development information. Manitobaparentzone.ca will run on a $70,000 annual budget, with initial site development and marketing costs of $200,000. The online registry is being launched at a cost of $1.575 million and will operate on an annual investment of $150,000.

You've heard the claims from the famous HighScope Perry Preschool and Abecedarian studies about the tremendous payoffs of early education for disadvantaged U.S. families, but did you know that Canadian researchers are also amassing unique results documenting the cost-benefits of preschool here?

By age 4, 40% of Quebec youngsters are attending a full-time, publicly-supported learning and care program. Pundits point to the high cost, but new work by economist Dr. Pierre Fortin of the University of Québec at Montréal reveals the benefits begin immediately and the payoffs are more far-reaching than speculated. Award-winning economist Robert Fairholm of the Centre for Spatial Economics shows that almost all Canadian governments make the wrong decision when allocating their economic stimulus dollars. At a panel discussion, moderated by Dr. Lars Osberg, McCulloch Professor of Economics at Dalhousie University, these researchers presented their findings and provided some new ways of thinking and talking about the public's interest in early childhood.

Excerpt: "This contribution will total more than $11.5M. Over 160,000 children between the ages of 0 and 5 live in these communities. The networks include municipalities, child care services, health and social service centres, schools and community organizations and total over 1,000 partner agencies."

Excerpt: "The recent news stories in the Windsor Star based on a small scale study by Rachel Heydon, challenging the value and experience of children in full day kindergarten is built on spotty reports from a pilot study in two Ontario classrooms suggesting that the new Full Day Kindergarten program may harm children based on too much academics and too little play. Although recent news stories have acknowledged that a study of two classrooms doesn’t give us a clear picture, some journalists truly believe further study will prove the researchers right."

Government memo re: amendments to legislation, regulations and guidelines related to Full Day Early Learning Kindergarten Program, including overview; operational framework for extended day and third party programs; safe schools and FDK; and broader implementation of FDK. Regulations indicate non-profit delivery of afterschool programs unless commercial programs are already in schools or no other alternatives are available.

The government announced the final roll out plans for full-day kindergarten for all 4- and 5-year-old children – approximately 250,000 children by September 2014.

The early learning atmosphere in Ontario includes a number of significant policy changes that have created new opportunities and new challenges. Examples include moving the jurisdictional responsibility for early learning and child care to the Ministry of Education, a new regulatory body for early childhood educators, the expansion of degree programs in early learning, the unionization of early childhood educators and a blend of the teaching and early learning profession.

The 8th Summer Institute on Early Childhood Development addressed how these changes impact early learning professionals and focus on relationships amongst families and professionals that involve practitioners, colleges and universities, professional associations and government.

Excerpt: "Quebec government launches a new logo for licensed child care programs to distinguish legally-recognized child care from illegal ones."

Excerpt: "Today, during Early Learning and Child Care Month, Education Minister Donna Harpauer announced that 13 communities have been allocated new licensed child care spaces as a result of the 2011-12 budget, which provided $2.1 million to develop 500 new child care spaces across Saskatchewan."

Excerpt: "The Full Day Early Learning Kindergarten Program implementation will have a differentiated impact across the province, particularly in rural communities, where the instability of child care services may result in rural children and families bearing a heavier burden of change compared to their urban peers..."