What decades of Canadian research tell us about the most important years of your child’s life and what you can do about it.
For too long, preschool has been seen through a narrow, transactional lens: a safe place where children spend their days while parents work. It’s a perception that is not just outdated – it is, according to a growing body of scientific evidence, fundamentally wrong. Preschool is one of the most consequential educational investments a child will ever receive. The years between birth and age five represent a period of neurological development so intense, so formative, that what happens during them echoes across an entire lifetime.
The science is unambiguous: the early years are the critical years
Research from the University of Minnesota shows that roughly 80% of a child’s brain development occurs within the first 1,000 days of life. By the time a child enters kindergarten, the architecture of their brain – its neural pathways, its capacity for language, memory, and emotional intelligence – has largely been laid. This is not a philosophical argument. It is neuroscience – and it has profound implications for how we think about the preschool years.
What Canadian research tells us
Canada’s education system consistently ranks among the best in the world, and the country’s researchers have been at the forefront of early childhood studies for decades. What they have found reframes the entire debate.
A major synthesis of Canadian and international studies found that program quality is the critical determinant of outcomes. High-quality early childhood education consistently produces positive results in cognitive and social-emotional development, while low-quality programs can do the reverse.
Source: Auger et al. (2014); Gathmann and Sass (2018); as cited in “Will the Increased Investment in Early Childhood Education in Canada Pay Off?”
The preschool years build self-regulation – a lifelong skill
A landmark cluster-randomized controlled trial conducted across Canadian preschools found that curricula designed to promote self-regulation during the preschool years set children on a significantly more positive developmental trajectory. The prefrontal cortex – the brain’s seat of executive function – undergoes its most rapid development precisely during the preschool period.
Source: “A Cluster Randomized-Controlled Trial of the Tools of the Mind Curriculum on Self-Regulation in Canadian Preschoolers”
Early investment produces lifelong dividends
Decades of research – including Canada’s analysis of the landmark Abecedarian Project and related programs – show that children who receive high-quality early childhood education demonstrate better academic outcomes, higher earning potential, stronger mental health, and lower rates of social difficulty in adulthood. These returns far exceed what the same investment achieves later in a child’s education.
In a rapidly changing world, bilingualism is not a bonus. It’s a necessity.
We live in an era of accelerating change – technological, economic, and cultural. The children entering preschool today will graduate into a world that looks fundamentally different from the one we know. The most future-proof skill we can give them is not coding, or mathematics, or any specific subject. It is cognitive flexibility – the ability to adapt, process complexity, and think across frameworks. And bilingualism, the research now makes clear, is one of the most powerful ways to build it.
Canadian researchers at the University of Lethbridge – funded through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) – found evidence that bilingual children aged 3 to 5 outperform their monolingual peers on executive function tasks, including working memory, cognitive flexibility, and attention control. The brains of children managing two languages are essentially performing a constant mental workout.
The window for language learning is narrow – and it opens early
Between birth and age six, children’s brains are in their most plastic, receptive state for language acquisition. Research from the Zero to Three Foundation and the Center on the Developing Child confirms that bilingual toddlers reach all developmental milestones, first words, vocabulary growth, sentence formation, exactly on schedule, while gaining a significant long-term cognitive advantage over their monolingual peers.
Bilingualism restructures the brain – literally
Brain imaging studies confirm that bilingual individuals show greater development in the motor cortex, Wernicke’s area, Broca’s area, and auditory cortex – the regions responsible for processing language, controlling speech production, and distinguishing sound. This is not just about language. These are the regions that underpin complex reasoning, problem solving, and communication across every domain of life.
Preschool, understood properly, is not preparation for school. It is school. It is where the most fundamental neural architecture is built – the architecture that will shape every subsequent learning experience your child ever has.
The question is not whether to invest in this period. The question is how – and with whom.
At Maple Bear the science becomes the standard.
Maple Bear Global Schools was built on exactly this premise: that preschool is not daycare, that bilingual education is not optional, and that Canadian pedagogical excellence is a gift every child in the world deserves access to.
Founded in Canada and now operating in more than 39 countries across 5 continents, Maple Bear delivers a student-focused early childhood program that puts the latest research into daily practice. The curriculum is written by a distinguished faculty of over 150 Canadian educators and is continuously updated to reflect the most current findings in developmental science.
At the preschool level, Maple Bear delivers an English immersion learning system grounded in Canadian best practices. At elementary and beyond, that bilingual foundation continues to grow – ensuring children can pursue their studies anywhere in the world.
This is what it looks like when science, care, and ambition come together. Not a place where children wait. A place where they begin.
