California Preschool Learning Foundations - ECEZero2Three ...

The preschool learning foundations
identify for teachers and
other educational stakeholders
a set of behaviors in mathematics
learning that are typical of children
who will be ready to learn what is
expected of them in kindergarten. The
foundations provide age-appropriate
competencies expected for older threeyear-olds
(i.e., at around 48 months
of age) and for older four-year-olds
(i.e., at around 60 months of age). That
is, the preschool learning foundations
represent goals to be reached by the
time a three-year-old is just turning
four and a four-year-old is just turning
five. Focusing on the child’s
readiness for school in the domain of
mathematics learning acknowledges
that there must also be appropriate
social-emotional, cognitive, and language
development as well as appropriate
motivation. Many such complementary
and mutually supporting
aspects of the child’s overall development
are addressed in the preschool
learning foundations for other domains
(e.g., social-emotional development,
language and literacy, and Englishlanguage
development).
These preschool learning foundations
are designed with the assumption
that children’s learning takes
FOUNDATIONS IN
Mathematics
place in everyday environments:
through interactions, relationships,
activities, and play that are part of a
beneficial preschool experience. The
foundations are meant to describe what
is typically expected to be observed
from young children in their everyday
contexts, under conditions appropriate
for healthy development, not as aspirational
expectations under the best
possible conditions. They are meant as
guidelines and tools to support teaching,
not as a list of items to be taught
as isolated skills and not to be used for
assessment.
Some mathematics foundations mention
specific expectations, using exact
numbers to describe a counting range
(e.g., “up to three,” or “up to four”) at
different ages or to set a minimum criterion
for a particular area (e.g., “compare
two groups of up to five objects”).
However, some children may exhibit
competencies that go beyond the level
described in a particular foundation,
while others may need more time to
reach that level. The foundations are
meant to give teachers a general idea of
what is typically expected from children
at around 48 or 60 months of age and
are not intended to set limits on the
way teachers support children’s learning
at different levels.
California Department of Education • Preschool Learning Foundations, Volume 1 143