Our Model
The Children’s Storefront works with parents to build their babies’ brains in the first thousand days of life, building a strong foundation for lifelong success.
We’re born with billions of neurons, and through age 3 we form more than 1 million neural connections each second – more than any other period of life.
These connections enable us to learn and adapt based on experience, and they form the basis of everything from our immune system to social emotional health to future academic learning.
The Children’s Storefront combines family support and community building with a science-backed brain development model to make the most of these early years.
We partner with parents and caregivers to harness the power of play and responsive interaction so that their children can build a strong foundation for lifelong success.
Why Early Childhood Matters
“Healthy development in the early years provides the building blocks for educational achievement, economic productivity, responsible citizenship, lifelong health, strong communities, and successful parenting of the next generation.”
– Harvard Center for the Developing Child
The first thousand days of life, from birth through our third year, represent our single best opportunity to change a child’s life for the better. Research shows that during this time, our brains develop at a rapid pace: neural connections are formed (more than 1 million each second!), language is developed, and we are learning about the world around us.
Our brains are also more sensitive and prone to change in response to our experiences — good and bad, nurturing and traumatic. But just as negative experiences impede brain development, nurturing and positive experiences accelerate it.
Parents and caregivers are the people best positioned to be catalysts for their child’s healthy growth. Scientific research has determined that nurturing, responsive interactions between parents and young children have an outsize impact on children’s brain development. The Children’s Storefront draws on the Serve & Return intervention developed by Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child to help parents learn these strategies and make the most of their babies’ early years.
Why We Focus on Brain Development
“Early experiences affect the development of brain architecture, which provides the foundation for all future learning, behavior, and health.”
– Harvard Center for the Developing Child
Helping children unlock their full potential for healthy brain development is essential, not only for the immediate effect it has on their growth, but because these early investments lay the foundation for lifelong success.
Recent research has demonstrated the long-term outcomes experienced by children who participate in programs like ours: in the short-term, children will have improved language development, higher executive functioning, and improved self-regulation. As they reach school-age, they have higher academic achievement and better social-emotional learning outcomes. In adulthood, physical, emotional, and mental health is improved, with lower incidences of ailments like heart disease, diabetes, depression, and obesity.
What’s most incredible is that the impact of investing in early childhood is actually intergenerational: as these children grow up and have babies of their own, their children are less likely to experience poverty, homelessness, and disease, all because their parents received nurturing, responsive care in the first few years of life.
Supporting brain development in the first thousand days of life will continue to have an impact for generations to come. It is the wisest investment we can make in our children, our families, and our communities.
Our Unique Approach
“Building the capabilities of adult caregivers can help strengthen the environment of relationships essential to children’s lifelong learning, health, and behavior.”
– Harvard Center for the Developing Child
The Children’s Storefront Play & Learn Program combines the proven Serve & Return model with our sixty year history of community building and family support. Unlike most early childhood programs, our focus is on supporting parents and caregivers directly, as we believe they are the true catalyst for their children’s healthy development.
At our Play & Learn Center in the heart of Harlem, we provide parents with information, skill-building, and a sense of community through nearly two dozen weekly Play & Learn Sessions and additional caregiver-focused programming. Our coaches partner with parents and other caregivers, sharing fun and actionable strategies to build their babies’ brains, creating opportunities to practice those strategies, and providing immediate feedback to caregivers to help them integrate these skills into their daily lives.
We understand that in order to nurture their children, parents themselves must have support and community. To achieve this, we work in groups rather than one-on-one, encouraging conversation and weaving relationships among families.
We also know that our program can only make an impact if families have equitable access to it and are able to easily participate. We ensure that our program remains accessible and relevant to our participants by offering it in both English and Spanish; keeping it free of cost; seeking feedback and refining our program as needed; and creating opportunities to adapt everything we discuss to the unique culture, structure, and needs of each family.
Our Program Model
“This program is a GIFT, and I wish it could be shared with every parent with a young child.”
– Program Participant
Each and every week, we offer twenty hour-long Play & Learn sessions at our Play & Learn Center in Harlem and virtually. In each session we welcome ten families to enjoy facilitated, brain-building play, including music, art, storytelling, and sensory activities. These activities are designed as opportunities to practice the skills of Serve & Return and to learn about childhood development. Each session is facilitated by our expert Coaches, who create an engaging community and simultaneously offer one-on-one support to parents.
In addition to our core Play & Learn Program, we also offer a host of special programming, which is developed based on feedback received from our community. These programs have included a parent support group, a hands-on cooking & workshop series focused on early childhood nutrition, and a music education program offered in partnership with Carnegie Hall.
Learn About Our Talented Team
The Children's Storefront
General Inquiries: [email protected]
Program: [email protected]
Funding: [email protected]
Phone
Mailing Address
The Children’s Storefront
P.O. Box 1171
New York, NY 10035
Street Address
2002 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10035
