- Approaches to Play and Learning focuses on how young children learn. Regardless of content area or subject matter, engaging in learning activities requires children to call upon a set of habits and skills, including curiosity, initiative, creativity, imagination, and cognitive and behavioral self-regulation.
- Social and Emotional Development focuses on how young children develop ideas about themselves and how they relate to other children and adults. Social and emotional skills allow children to participate in the learning environment successfully and set a strong foundation for developing positive relationships with others that they will carry forward throughout their lives.
- Communication, Language and Literacy Development focuses on how young children explore the connections among letters, sounds, and words and how they work together to create meaning. Children’s communication, language and literacy development, as seen for all areas of learning and development, varies and requires individualized learning and development support.
- Health and Physical Development focuses on how young children develop and strengthen their large muscles to become increasingly capable of walking, climbing, running, dancing, and other large motor movements.
- Cognitive Development focuses on how young children develop their cognitive abilities through their earliest observations and experiences with their natural, physical, and social environments as they question, explore, describe, predict, think, and share their thinking.