Early Childhood Essentials framework

The Early Childhood Essentials framework presents the essential skills and competencies children should acquire before they enter kindergarten and the related skills and competencies early childhood educators (early educators) must cultivate in order to provide high-quality early learning experiences that will set all children on the path to success in school and in life. It provides a baseline of knowledge to help decisions-makers think critically about how to improve the early learning programs they oversee.

The Essential Child Skills

1. Social-emotional development refers to children’s abilities to engage in meaningful relationships with adults and peers; recognize, express, and regulate their own emotions and respond appropriately to the emotions of others; and develop social skills and understanding.
2. Cognitive development includes children’s abilities to engage in imitation and symbolic play, as well as their early cognitive skills of executive function, such as holding and manipulating information in their minds, sustaining their attention on a task, shifting their attention when appropriate, and controlling their impulses.
3. Language and literacy development captures the ability of children to communicate effectively along a continuum that includes gestures, facial expressions, and eventually language to communicate needs, emotions, and thoughts, as well as early literacy skills that lay the foundation for children to become successful readers and writers as they enter school.
4. Mathematical and scientific reasoning encompasses the development of skills—such as number sense algebraic and geometric thinking, and spatial awareness and measurement—as well as young children’s emerging exploration and discovery skills that develop into intentional scientific inquiry skills as they master their worlds.
5. Physical development refers to a range of skills, most commonly motor development, that support children’s abilities to explore their environments fully and interact with people and things.

Complete report