I will address the question of the formation of  the first generations of stars in the Local Group dwarf spheroidal galaxies as well as in the Milky Way halo. I will outline our latest news on the observational front focussing on the dispersion (or not) in abundance ratios, discuss LTE and NLTE treatments of the elemental abundances, and present how high resolution numerical simulations can help us understand the onset of the galaxy star formation histories.