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Early Learning Guidelines

Across all five domains

5-year-olds

Stage Infants Toddlers Preschool Early elementary
Age 0–9 months 8–16 months 15–24 months 24–36 months 3-year-olds 4-year-olds 5-year-olds 6-year-olds 7-year-olds 8-year-olds
Domain All domains I. Approaches to Learning II. Physical Well-Being, Health and Motor Development III. Social and Emotional Development IV. Communication, Language, and Literacy V. Cognitive Development
Show Both What educators might observe Ways educators might support the child's development
I

Approaches to Learning

A

Curiosity and Interest

Child approaches the world with curiosity and develops knowledge about specific topics.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Recognizes their peers’ knowledge and asks them about things that they are experts in
  • Asks scientific questions (e.g., what happens to the caterpillar when it is in the chrysalis)
  • Believes that there is one objective truth about a subject and thinks that if others have a different interpretation, they do not know the truth
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Support children’s ability to learn from one another:
    • Allow time for sharing work
    • Welcome questions and comments from other classmates about one another’s work
  • Provide resources related to children’s interests (e.g., if you hear children talking about dinosaurs, add dinosaur books, figures of dinosaurs to the learning centers)
B

Initiative

Child pursues their own goals.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Takes care of classroom chores without being asked (e.g., throws out napkin after snack)
  • Develops a play idea day after day (e.g., child returns to block area to continue a construction and play scenario that has been developed throughout the week)
  • Advocates for their plot ideas when engaged in dramatic play with peers (e.g., when playing hospital in the dramatic play area, child asserts that the patient should be cured, while peer thinks they should die)
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Notice children’s attempts to initiate play ideas with peers, and advocate for those children whose ideas are not acknowledged
  • Use children’s suggestions to set up a helper or job chart, with children volunteering for helper roles on a weekly basis
C

Persistence and Attentiveness

Child focuses on tasks and perseveres in accomplishing them.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Attends to open-ended tasks that they are interested in for a minimum of 20- 30 minutes
  • Pauses work to get up to talk to their peers
  • Rebuilds their elaborate block structure after it has been knocked down
  • Tries several different ways of solving a problem (e.g., tries making a bridge with blocks to drive a car over, and when it falls, tries a new foundation so that it will support the cars)
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Choose a book to read aloud to the class over several days; each day ask children to recall details from the previous readings and predict what will happen next
  • Offer children a variety of materials for open-ended work, encouraging them to stay with work they do not finish in one working period
  • Take time to reflect on the process together, asking:
    • “How did you do that?”
    • “Where did your idea come from?”
D

Creativity and Inventiveness

Child uses their imagination to create and invent.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Adds detail to creations (e.g., makes a clay bird with wings and a beak)
  • Asks more experienced people for advice about their creations (e.g., discusses ways to build stairs with an educator and then uses their advice)
  • Uses writing to add detail to their projects (e.g., includes a stop sign in their block construction)
  • Makes detailed and elaborate costumes for pretend play
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Include books in the learning environment about inventive and creative characters
    • Frederick by Leo Lioni
    • Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson
    • Iggy Peck Architect by Andrea Beatty
    • Rosie Revere Engineer by Andrea Beatty
    • The Dot by Peter Reynolds
    • B eautiful Oops by Barnie Saltzberg
  • Teach vocabulary related to art-making (“One color of paper could overlap, or go on top of another color, in your collage”)
  • Provide opportunities for learning in which there is no right or wrong way to accomplish the goal, and encourage children to try different strategies or solutions
II

Physical Well-Being, Health and Motor Development

A

Large Motor Skills

Child uses and coordinates their large muscle groups.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Skips using alternating feet
  • Walks backwards
  • Turns somersaults
  • Catches a playground ball from 3 feet away
  • Balances on either foot
  • Walks up and down stairs while holding an object
  • Moves confidently around an obstacle course, maintaining balance while stopping and turning
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Provide access to playground materials that support the development of gross motor skills
    • Hula Hoops
    • Basketballs
    • Soccer balls
    • Large wooden blocks
    • Jump ropes
B

Small Motor Skills

Child controls the small muscles in their hands and wrists.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Consistently uses their right or left hand
  • Tears a small piece of tape off a tape dispenser
  • Uses scissors with one hand to cut out shapes
  • Uses pencil to copy many shapes and letters; these may be overly large or rough looking but the letter will be apparent
  • Spins a top
  • Zips up own coat
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Include materials in the learning environment that foster fine motor skills
    • Geoboards
    • Legos
    • Bottles of glue
    • Tape
    • Wire
    • Plasticine
    • Small beads for stringing
    • T ops
  • Show sensitivity to children’s flexible directionality, and demonstrate left to right directionality with writing and counting, as on a number line
C

Sensory Integration

The child uses sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, proprioception (deep pressure), and vestibular function (balance) to perceive and respond to the world around them.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Developing left-to-right visual tracking
  • Moves around the learning environment easily and successfully
  • Spends time moving their body into different positions (e.g., upside down)
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Have meetings before rough-and-tumble play to establish safe limits
  • Provide activities that engage children’s senses
    • Rolling down a hill
    • Wheelbarrow walks
    • Monkey bars
    • Rolling and carrying gallon jugs full of water
    • Cartwheels
    • Jumping jacks
  • Include soft and cozy elements in the learning environment
D

Self-Care

Child cares for their physical well-being.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Manages the contents of their backpack (e.g., takes out their folder and hangs it on their hook when they arrive in school)
  • Gets lunch on their tray or their lunchbox from their backpack and eats without prompting during lunch time
  • Safely manages increasing levels of risk in physical play
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Gently introduce the routines of the learning environment, taking special time with children who did not go to preschool
  • For children who eat in school cafeterias, arrange lunch procedures that allow time, space, and appropriate noise levels for children to eat and enjoy their food
  • Review rules and protocols for safety procedures such as evacuation drills, crossing streets, and lock down drills before they occur; reflect on children’s practice together afterwards
  • Observe children closely as they take calculated risks in active play
E

Healthy Sexuality

Child develops a healthy relationship to their body, pleasure, and others. This healthy sense of self is supported and demonstrated through respectful, caring, and loving relationships with families, educators, and other children.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Uses correct names for parts of the body
  • May be familiar with exploring genitals but still have questions about their functions
  • Understands that certain bodily activities have particular times and places, and accepts limits (e.g., may pick their nose in the bathroom)
  • Explores the idea of family and marriage, and understands that some adults are married and that some are not; is aware that there are lots of different ways to make a family
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Allow children to explore the idea of partnerships with each other, regardless of their gender identity
  • Reflect on your own biases and examine your habits, curriculum, and classroom environment for subtle or overt messages children may be receiving about gender, bodies, and relationships
  • Actively learn about the families of the children you serve and ensure that your curriculum reflects and honors their diversity and their strengths
  • Include books in the learning environment that celebrate all kinds of families
    • Dear Child , by John Farrell
    • The Different Dragon , by Jennifer Bryan
    • The Family Book , by Todd Parr
    • Stella Brings the Family, by Miriam B. Schiffer
    • A Family is a Family is a Family , by Sara O’Leary
III

Social and Emotional Development

A

Trusting Relationships with Adults

Child develops trusting relationships with nurturing adults.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Interacts with significant adults outside of the family and classroom (e.g., speaks with the bus driver and cook)
  • Seeks guidance from family members, educators, and other familiar adults
  • Transitions into unfamiliar settings with the assistance of a familiar adult
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Assist children in sustaining interactions in play by modeling, cooperating, helping, and suggesting new ideas for play
  • Help the child identify community members they can trust and ask for assistance (e.g., home visitors, mentors, older extended family members, or caring individuals within the community at large)
  • Show interest in the child’s other interpersonal relationships (e.g., “What do you and Gus the bus driver talk about when he takes you home?”)
  • Take time to do something that you know is special for the child (e.g., ask them to teach you some words in their home language)
B

Sense of Belonging

Child experiences a sense of belonging in environments that link, extend, and affirm the child’s family and community. Child expresses comfort and joy with human diversity.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • When a child’s home culture or experience differs from the dominant or mainstream culture, they may
    • Reject their home culture and adopt the dominant one
    • Reject dominant culture and insist on home culture
    • Learn to adjust behavior and to become bi-cultural
  • W hen a child’s home culture and experience has been affirmed, they may express pride in their racial, linguistic and cultural identity
  • When a child’s home culture or experience aligns with dominant or mainstream culture, they may
    • Internalize a false sense that they are “normal” or superior
  • Prefers a child who speaks their own language or language variation as a friend
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Invite family members into the classroom and talk to them as part of a study of families, careers, or interests
  • Engage families in conversations about their national and family origins to affirm positive social identities
  • Record families telling stories in their home language and include them as part of your listening center/library
  • Intentionally plan activities to counter potential overgeneralizations or existing stereotypes
  • Engage children in conversation about unfair social differences, including wealth and power
  • Model and explain accurate and appropriate vocabulary for different social groups. For example, name your own racial identity.
  • Teach children about what causes differences in skin color using books like All the Colors We Are: The Story of how We Get Our Skin Color , by Katie Kissinger
C

Sense of Self

Child develops a sense of self through noticing and developing their own interests, preferences, and abilities. Child increasingly develops self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Identifies and expresses own interests, preferences, and abilities
  • Confidently expresses likes and dislikes
  • Has unrealistic positive overestimations of their own abilities
  • Compares or contrasts self to others (e.g., physical characteristics, preferences, abilities, and feelings)
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Allow children to hold responsibilities within the classroom
  • Provide opportunities for child to attempt new tasks without prompting or reinforcement
  • Showcase children’s cultures, interests, and capabilities
    • Create an art gallery of children’s work
    • Use study examples and displays created by children
    • Verbally reinforce children’s thinking process, capabilities, and accomplishments
    • Enc ourage children to demonstrate and share their own uniqueness
  • When doing introductions, invite all members of the community to share their gender pronouns along with their names “What words would you like us to use when we talk about you? When people talk about me, I like them to say ‘she/her.’
  • Actively celebrate children’s marginalized social identities and validate their observations of injustice; acknowledge and talk about their healthy feelings of confusion, sadness, fear, and anger in individual, small group, and whole group conversation
  • Explore feelings, confidence in one’s abilities, and identity using books like
    • Katy and the Big Snow , by Virginia Lee Burton
    • Be Boy Buzz , by bell hooks
    • I Love My Hair! by Natasha Ana Tarpley
D

Empathy

Child forms deep, caring, human connections by imagining what someone else may be thinking or feeling and responding with care. Child recognizes unfairness and understands that unfairness hurts.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Begins to recognize how own actions affect others
  • Listens to viewpoints of others
  • Offers support to another child or shows concern when a peer is upset (e.g., “I see you’re sad. Do you want to play with me?”)
  • Develops their own theories about social inequities (e.g., why some groups of people tend to have more money and decision-making power than others)
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Acknowledge children’s ability to practice empathy (“I saw how you let Diego have the markers when he was upset. I bet you wanted the markers too, but you chose to help a friend.”)
  • Throughout the year, talk to children about past and present injustices and social justice movements
  • When children notice injustice in their classroom or community, engage them in group action to try to make things fairer
  • Read books about kindness
    • The Last Stop on Market Street , by Matt de la Peña,
    • The Lion and the Mouse, by Jerry Pinkney
    • The Big Umbrella , by Amy June Bates
E

Cooperation and Negotiation

Child navigates friendships with peers through cooperation and negotiation.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Shares, take turns, and cooperates in a group
  • Listens to others’ ideas and wants; shares own ideas and wants
  • Understands that sometimes you are a leader, and sometimes you are a follower
  • Plays simple card games that require turn-taking and waiting
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Reflect with families about how they feel children should act toward their friends and siblings
  • Consider peer placement during classroom activities; notice children who have been connecting with one another and place them together
  • Read books about cooperation and negotiation
    • Swimmy , by Leo Lionni
    • Seven Blind Mice , by Ed Young
    • Anansi the Spider , by Gerald McDermott
  • Encourage peer partnerships, such as play partners or clean-up buddies
  • Tell the folk story of stone soup and make stone soup together as a class; discuss the value of working together
  • Include child-directed activities in the daily schedule in order to give children the opportunity to learn to cooperate and negotiate
F

Emotional Self-Regulation

Child expresses and manages their feelings and impulses.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Often expresses strong feelings in socially and culturally accepted ways
  • Identifies emotions and uses words to describe them
  • Describes why people may feel differently about the same situation
  • Intentionally uses humor (e.g., begins to tell jokes)
  • Begins to understand and explain reactions to certain circumstances
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Talk to families and colleagues about their expectations for children’s behavior; acknowledge contrasting or conflicting beliefs
  • Try multiple strategies consistently to prevent child(ren)’s adverse feelings and impulses
  • Verbally reinforce children’s attempts at self-control (e.g., “I see that you are mad. I am happy to see you take some deep breaths.”)
  • Avoid removing the child from an activity or from the classroom as a consequence
G

Rhythms, Rules, and Routines

Child follows the rhythms, rules, and routines of the learning environment.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Changes actions to meet expectations of different settings (e.g., takes off shoes at home but wears shoes at school)
  • Applies familiar rules in new but similar situations (e.g., uses a quiet voice inside)
  • Adapts to new environment by behaving and displaying emotions in expected ways (e.g., goes to a new friend’s house and is able to be calm, share, and take turns)
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Create rules that are manageable (3–5 classroom rules around safety, for example), ask for children’s input about the rules, and discuss what makes a strong rule
  • Review the rules and classroom expectations regularly, at a time when things are calm
  • Post rules in words and pictures
  • Enforce rules and consequences consistently and fairly for all children
  • Reflect about which children are most commonly disciplined in the learning environment; do these children belong to marginalized groups?
  • Reflect with families and colleagues about how children may perceive the educator’s attempts to provide direction (e.g., Educator says, “Would you return to your seat?” and child perceives it as a question rather than a request)
IV

Communication, Language, and Literacy

A

Speaking

Child will develop the ability to speak and/ or sign in increasingly complete, complex, precise, and varied ways.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Initiates and maintains a conversation with peers for exchanges over longer periods of time
  • Talks about language, as in “I know Spanish,” or “I think that is what you said.”
  • Responds to the question, “What did you say?”
  • Uses increasingly complex sentence structure to express thoughts (“I am going to the hospital, but I’m pretending. I’m not going to have the baby. The mommy is going to have the baby.”)
  • Talks in different ways depending on place and listener
  • Tells simple stories
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Set up your library with books in multiple languages
  • Value and make time for extended conversations, and engage in one-to-one exchanges around children’s interests and questions
  • Ask open ended questions:
    • Why do you think…?
    • What happened when…?
    • What would happen if…?
    • What is the story in this picture?
B

Listening and Understanding

Child will develop their ability to listen and understand complete, complex, precise, and varied language.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Responds to multi-step directions or requests (e.g., “First, wash your hands. Then bring me the green towel, and then we will have snack.”)
  • Observes and interprets details about environment, events, or speakers
  • Understands words for time, like “yesterday,” “today,” and “tomorrow”
  • Role plays familiar events described by others, such as a friend’s story
  • Understands forms of social speech from their family, culture and community
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Take dictation of a story, and then have children act the story out as the educator reads it, turning text into action
  • Invite children to discuss a topic of study in whole group, small groups and pairs
  • Offer children instructions with sequential words (“First do this and then this.”); observe how they follow through
  • Encourage emergent multilingual learners to translate vocabulary into their home language and to make connections between topics of study and their own lives
C

Social Communication

Child uses language to relate to others according to the social expectations of their family, community, and culture.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Pays attention to speaker in a conversation
  • Takes turns during group conversations, raising hand to speak, with reminders
  • Emergent multilingual children gauge and then speak in the dominant language of communication used by the person with whom they are speaking
  • Provides additional information to clarify when listener does not understand the child’s meaning
  • Uses language to persuade or to state an opinion
  • Uses body language, facial expressions, and tone to predict behavior
  • Tells stories with characters and a more complex sense of structure to events and actions
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Establish norms for structured group conversations, ensuring that all children have the opportunity to be heard (e.g., an expectation that there will be only one voice at a time)
  • Provide children with time to interact socially throughout the day
  • Discuss social dynamics with children (“Some kids have been asking to sit together at lunch every day. How does it seem if they sit together every day?”)
D

Engaging with Stories and Books

Child enjoys, attends to, understands, and makes meanings from spoken and written language of storytelling and books.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Expresses an opinion about a story
  • Compares stories with one another (e.g., “In all the Skippy Jon Jones books, Skippy goes on adventures in his closet.”)
  • Asks questions about the stories and texts
  • Makes predictions about what will happen in stories or texts based on adult modeling
  • Responds to stories or texts by incorporating characters and narratives from them into dramatic play
  • Uses books to learn more about topics of interest (e.g., creates a map of the subway system based on text and their lived experience)
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Read a variety of books aloud daily
    • Picture books with shorter and longer text
    • Chapter books
    • Non-fiction texts
    • Poetry
  • When reading, pause to define new, unfamiliar, and interesting words, and invite students to use them
  • Summarize and retell stories
  • Give children the opportunity to return to familiar books and stories, in order to play with storylines and characters (e.g., after reading several versions of Stone Soup , child writes “Stone Soup Recipes”)
  • Activate children’s background knowledge and encourage them to connect texts to their own lives
  • Build children’s background knowledge by helping them understand texts through field trips and experiential learning
  • Create book time for children to look at and “read” self-selected books on their own and with friends
E

Phonological Awareness

Child develops the ability to recognize and manipulate the different sounds in spoken language(s).

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Demonstrates awareness that spoken language is composed of smaller sound segments (e.g., labels a drawing using initial sounds)
  • Shows word awareness by isolating a single word from a sentence
  • Produces one or more words that rhyme with another word (e.g., “What rhymes with log?”)
  • Provides a word that fits with a group of words sharing an initial sound (e.g., “Sock, Sara, and Song all start with the /s/ sound. What else starts with the /s/ sound?”)
  • Produces the sounds made by many letters
  • Uses initial and some final sounds in invented spelling (e.g. writes, “IATK” For “I ate cake”)
  • Emergent multilingual children show awareness of sounds from home language(s)
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Sing songs and recite poems and rhymes, such as “BINGO,” and “I Like to Eat Apples and Bananas”
  • During read-aloud and other small and large group discussions examine words for sounds and letters that represent them; do this for words that are meaningful to children, such as letters/sounds of their names
  • Introduce longer songs that rhyme, which allow children to make up their own rhymes (e.g., sing “Down By The Bay” and incorporate lines like: “ Have you ever seen a fish making a wish? ”)
  • Point out sound-letter correspondences, especially in high-interest words and/or children’s names
  • Encourage children to label objects in their drawings with initial letters
  • T each word-learning strategies such as making connections to home languages
F

Composing

Child uses materials and/ or language to make meaning for themselves and/or an audience.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Collaborates on shared writing (e.g., contributes a sentence to a class letter thanking the custodial staff)
  • Uses drawing and invented spelling to tell an original story of connected events or related ideas on a topic
  • Shares expertise about a topic of interest though a verbal presentation, drawing, and/ or writing
  • Collaborates with peers to recount an event, each child adding to the story
  • Plans and extends dramatic and symbolic play with peers
  • Develops characters and settings within dramatic play
  • Composes messages that approximate the features and qualities of scripts in more precise ways (e.g., writes more recognizable letters; writes from left to right in English)
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Create shared texts for the class by writing familiar songs, rhymes, and poems on posters
  • Provide writing paper with space for drawing and some lines for writing
  • Allow children to collaborate in groups with peers who share their home language
  • Assume that children are making sense with their early writing; when a child writes on their own a string of letters that do not make sense to the educator, the educator asks, “What story did you write?” or “What story do your words tell?”
G

Creating and Interpreting Multimedia Texts

Child views, creates, and makes meaning of visual communication and multimedia documentation, which includes drawings, collections, photographs, videos and displays.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Plans to use multimedia documentation to record and extend their work in the learning environment
  • Reflects on accuracy of visual documentation (e.g., looks at a picture of a dinosaur and says, “I think they were even bigger than that.”)
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Engage children in planning how to record experiences that are meaningful to them
  • Support children in creating displays to share their learning with educators, families and peers
  • Engage children in conversation about the accuracy of visual documentation
V

Cognitive Development

A

Understanding Stability and Change

Child recognizes and develops the ability to explain how material objects change and how they remain stable.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Begins to understand death as a biological event
  • Begins to understand how the body functions to sustain life
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Include non-fiction books about life cycles in the learning environment
  • Include simple biological information in discussion of death (“Their heart has stopped beating. They are not coming back.”)
B

Representing

Child uses symbolic thought to represent.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Adds details from a scene to its visual representation (e.g., the landscape or the weather)
  • Differentiates fantasy from reality
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Observe and reflect on children’s dramatic play; consider what background knowledge they are drawing on
  • Offer large pieces of materials to be used in different ways, as well as costumes that suggest a role: worker’s hats (hard hat, bus drivers’ hat), vest and suit jackets, dresses, a doctor’s kit
  • Ask the child, “What story are you telling?” in their drawing or construction
  • Write or help children write a story based on what they drew, acted out, or built
C

Memory and History

Child develops the ability to store, retrieve, and share information about past experiences.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Retells an important life event in sequential order (e.g., draws a picture about something they did during summer vacation)
  • Believes that they can remember much more than they really can
  • Describes how memory works (e.g., says, “It’s easier to remember something that happened yesterday than something that happened last month.”)
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Support the child in making a timeline of their life
  • Write a book, About my Life , with pages of stories about what happened when they were a baby, a toddler, and more recently
  • Draw a picture of what life was like at a different time, such as before a sibling was born or before they moved
D

Investigating and Exploring

Child becomes a scientific thinker by manipulating objects, asking questions, making observations and predictions, and developing generalizations.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Asks “how” things were made (e.g., “How does a pigeon build a nest?”)
  • Generates ideas about how to find the answers to their questions (e.g., when wanting to learn more about trucks, the child decides to ask a family member who drives a truck)
  • Lists materials needed for an experiment
  • Records information from an experience (e.g., drawing, writing, storytelling, photographing)
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Model the use of scientific vocabulary
  • Ask children to record observations of particular objects and outside scenes such as a cityscape, a tree, a garden
  • View wrong answers or explanations as theories in development
  • Ask for predictions about observable phenomena (“How do the apples get soft when we make apple sauce?”)
  • Provide unique pictures, such as X-rays or close ups of butterfly wings and snowflakes
E

Understanding Cause and Effect

Child understands and explores the causes and effects of actions and events.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Predicts an outcome based on previous effects they have observed (“If we leave the seeds on the top of the dirt, the birds will come eat them.”)
  • Seeks but does not readily accept scientific causes for things
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Provide materials and opportunities to observe cause and effect
    • Blocks
    • Marble runs
    • Gears
    • Paints
    • Planting
    • Powders for mixing
  • Ask children “what if” questions
    • What if we took the bottom block out first?
    • What if we add more water to the corn starch mixture?
    • What if we add more red to the purple color paint you mixed?
F

Engineering: Problem-solving with Materials

Child plans and uses hands, tools, and technology to solve problems with materials.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool

What educators might observe
  • Uses blocks to build stairs
  • Sticks with a problem-solving strategy that has been successful before, without considering other alternatives
  • Plans how to make a functional object from materials (e.g., a spinning top from Lego pieces)
  • Replicates engineering solutions from life in play (e.g., creating a door with a latch for a cardboard house)
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Use fairytales to encourage building; for instance, read The Three Little Pigs , and ask groups of children to create houses that would withstand a wolf’s huffing and puffing
  • Challenge children with prompts such as
    • Make something with a window in it
    • Make something that floats
  • Ask the child about work they have done
    • “Tell me about your construction.”
    • “How do these parts work?”
    • “What is their function?”
    • “What’s another strategy that you could use?”
G

Math

1. Comparing and Categorizing

Child recognizes some similarities and differences between familiar and unfamiliar people, objects, or experiences.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool
What educators might observe
  • Sorts by a single attribute and reclassifies according to another attribute (e.g., sorts writing implements by type and then re-sorts them by color)
  • Arranges 5–10 objects shortest to longest, biggest to smallest, or heaviest to lightest
  • Compares number of objects by counting, even when one of the objects is bigger, up to 10
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Compare characters in a story or subjects in a non-fiction text
  • Create class charts and surveys with student information such as siblings, caretakers, or ways of getting to school; use these to compare aspects of the class
  • Compare classroom materials, sorting different sizes or shapes of blocks, for example, and discussing how to use them

2. Number Sense and Quantity

Child understands and explores numbers and quantity.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool
What educators might observe
  • Quickly names the number of objects in groups of five without counting
  • Tells what number comes after any number between one and 20
  • Explains that numbers tell “how many” of something
  • Recognizes and writes numerals 1 through 10
  • Divides up to 20 objects between four or five people by dealing out an object to each person
  • Uses the words “first,” “second,” “third,” up to and including “tenth” (e.g., says, “I came in fourth” when describing a race with classmates
  • Counts on their fingers
  • Keeps track of objects that have and have not been counted (e.g., slides objects they have already counted to the side)
  • Counts backward from 10 by taking away objects
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Provide bags of objects to count (10 acorns, 14 keys, 19 cubes) and ask children to count and draw the objects in them
  • Allow children to freely play with math manipulatives before using them to solve problems
  • S et up the dramatic play area as a store, and invite children to use number cards to “purchase” objects
  • Analyze the mathematical thinking in children’s errors
  • Provide games with dice and dominoes so that children can practice recognizing the number of items in a small set without counting
  • Find math in the body, and play finger math; for example, hold up three fingers on one hand and ask children how many fingers are folded down

3. Patterning

Child develops the ability to identify, describe, extend, and create patterns.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool
What educators might observe
  • Creates and identifies simple repeating patterns (e.g., draws a pattern of hearts and stars around the edge of their picture)
  • Creates and extends simple growing patterns (e.g., stacks one, then two, then three blocks to make a staircase)
  • Explains growing patterns such as the pattern of “plus one” in addition (“If I add one, I get the next number.”)
  • Describes a “jump, jump, clap” movement as two of something then one of something
  • Pays attention to the linguistic patterns in the names of numbers, “Four, forty, and four hundred all sound like four!”
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Provide materials such as wooden cubes to build a staircase to model a “plus one” pattern
  • Create ABC patterns together using clapping, tapping, and patting on the body; ask children to follow your pattern and then allow them to lead, with you following their pattern
  • Sing songs with patterns, such as “Everyone Comes from a Different Place”

4. Spatial Sense and Geometry

Child understands how objects, points, lines, and shapes fit in space.

5-year-olds – See this age across all domains Preschool
What educators might observe
  • Correctly uses position words such as “beside,” “under,” and “inside” to describe objects
  • Slides, flips and turns pieces to make them fit in a puzzle, but does not always move them in the right direction at first
  • Recognizes that there are other shapes that are not common (e.g., rhombus and hexagon)
  • Spontaneously creates symmetrical buildings in the block area
  • Builds complex bridges with multiple arches, ramps, and stairs at the ends
  • Intentionally puts pattern block shapes together to make another shape for a picture
Ways educators might support the child's development
  • Invite children to draw maps of routes, illustrating what landmarks will be passed or seen on different routes
  • Draw maps of the playground and use them to go on a scavenger hunt
  • Challenge the child to cover hexagon pattern blocks with other pattern blocks and see what works
  • Introduce vocabulary such as “sides,” “angles,” and “parallel lines”
  • Identify and describe the symmetry children spontaneously create in their art work
  • Hunt for shapes outside and around the school; take photographs of them and print them out as shape books for the classroom

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