Parents' interests and abilities as sources of young children's everyday learning opportunities.

The study described in the manuscript is part of a line of research and practice by the author and his colleagues investigating the sources of and factors associated with young children's participation and learning in informal everyday activities as part of routine family and community life. [...] Parent and child involvement in interest-based and activity-based activities was assessed by computing the average number of activities identified as interest-based or ability-based parent activities, the average number of interest-based and ability-based activities that the children were involved in, and the average number of interest-based and ability-based activities where parents'reported chil. [...] Abil ity-Based Activity partici pati on The average number of activities identified as parents' interests and abilities, the average number of interest-based and ability-based activities in which the parents' children were participants, and the average number of activities in which child learning occurred, are shown in Table 3. [...] The data in the two appendices were used to determine, for those everyday activities identified as the parents' interests and abilities, the percent of children who were engaged in the activities, and the percent of children for whom parents reported child learning. [...] The two sets of activities are rank-ordered in terms of the percent of children learning in the activities.