Several studies have suggested that intensive musical training enhances children’s linguistic skills. Such training, however, is not available to all children. We studied in a community setting whether a low-cost, weekly music playschool provided to 5–6-year-old children in kindergartens could already affect their linguistic abilities. Children (N = 66) were tested four times over two school-years with Phoneme processing and Vocabulary subtests, along with tests for Perceptual reasoning skills and Inhibitory control. We compared the development of music playschool children to their peers either attending to similarly organized dance lessons or not attending to either activity. Music playschool significantly improved the development of children’s phoneme processing and vocabulary skills. No such improvements on children’s scores for non-verbal reasoning and inhibition were obtained. Our data suggest that even playful group music activities – if attended to for several years – have a positive effect on pre-schoolers’ linguistic skills. Therefore we promote the concept of implementing regular music playschool lessons given by professional teachers in early childhood education.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the associations between social-emotional and language development in a sample of 3–5-year-old children in community-based early childhood education and care (N = 90). Children’s theory of mind understanding, affect recognition and language abilities were tested with neuropsychological measurements, and their teachers rated their behavior with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. The results showed that language development was linked to the children’s social-emotional development and theory of mind ability. Furthermore, the children’s observed social-emotional skills and the neuropsychological measurements had associations with their capacity to understand and name emotions in a Teddy Bear test designed for the study. The Teddy Bear test will be developed and validated with a larger sample in a forthcoming study. The present results support the rationale for an intervention study aiming to enhance the children’s language development and their social-emotional understanding, to support the children’s social-emotional development.

In the spring of 2020, as a result of the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many children dropped out of daycare and early education in Finland, and parents had to balance work and childcare for months. The wellbeing of families during the lockdown has been studied to some extent, but few studies have focused on children under school age. In May 2020, we sent a survey to the 82 families originally recruited in our study on supporting social-emotional development in early childhood education units, which had been interrupted by the pandemic. Twenty families responded to questionnaires about the impacts of the lockdown on the wellbeing of the children and their parents. Parents reported a decline in children’s prosocial behavior compared to the time before the pandemic and assessed that the children who stayed at home were lonelier than children who remained in daycare. Otherwise, being at home or in care was not associated with children’s physical or mental wellbeing. Parents had experienced increased mental strain and increased problems in marital relationships and the disruption of children’s participation in daycare was associated with deterioration in the parent–child relationship. Due to the small sample size, these results should be interpreted with caution.

The maturation of 5–6-year-old children’s auditory discrimination – indicated by the development of the auditory event-related-potentials (ERPs) – has not been previously studied in longitudinal settings. For the first time, we present here the results based on extensive dataset collected from 75 children. We followed the 5- to 6-year-olds for 20 months and measured their ERPs four times with the same multifeature paradigm with phonemic stimuli. The amplitude of the mismatch negativity (MMN) response increased during this time for vowel, vowel duration and frequency changes. Furthermore, the P3a component started to mature toward adult-like positivity for the vowel, intensity and frequency deviants and the late discriminative negativity (LDN) component decreased with age for vowel and intensity deviants. All the changes in the components seemed to happen during the second follow-up year, when Finnish children are taught letter symbols and other preliminary academic skills before going to school at the age of seven. Therefore, further studies are needed to clarify if these changes in the auditory discrimination are purely age-related or due to increasing linguistic knowledge of the children.

A randomized controlled parallel-group trial was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of two 10-week early childhood education and care (ECEC) interventions “SAGA” and “Pikkuli” for supporting social-emotional and verbal development. All children above the age of 4 were invited from 15 Finnish volunteer ECEC groups (n SAGA = 52, n Pikkuli = 56, n control group = 42). The children and caregivers, but not the personnel (who carried out the intervention), were blinded to the group assignment. Children in the SAGA intervention advanced in prosocial behavior and social orientation and had fewer internalizing and externalizing problems after the intervention. Children in the Pikkuli intervention advanced in prosocial behavior and had fewer internalizing problems after the intervention. There were no significant changes in any of the aforementioned outcomes in the control group. The results suggest that both interventions have good potential in supporting children’s social-emotional development in the ECEC environment.