“If I wasn’t providing care for the children…I’m sure it would be substantially more that I would be bringing in,” she said. Family, friend and neighbor caregivers, often referred to as “informal” ...

But millions of children aren’t enrolled in formal child care or preschool programs; they’re being watched through informal arrangements their parents may have set up with friends or relatives.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has awarded the YMCA of the USA $1 million to expand a pilot program that offers free early-childhood education classes for the caregivers of children in informal settings.

AT WHAT age should children start ... has been reignited by a letter, signed by about 130 early childhood education experts. It called for an extension of informal, play-based preschool provision ...

With time, the initiative sprouted wings to reach schools, in an attempt to design a letter writing curriculum for children, an offshoot of a series of workshops that introduced the children to ...