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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
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
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
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
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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