According to Dr. Ann Epstein's article "Montessori Early Childhood Language: Life-Long Literacy," language development is the cornerstone of all early childhood curricula. Although a good early childhood curriculum is an asset in a classroom, the moment-to-moment interactions children have with teachers and other children have a more significant impact on language development than only implementing the curriculum. Communicating with children positively impacts the development of language concepts and skills. Talking to children about what is happening in their lives is the opportunity to create language that fits within context.
Cognition is the process of thinking. Piaget, a prominent child development researcher, identified two stages of early childhood cognitive development--sensori-motor and symbolic representation. A curriculum focusing on sensori-motor development provides infants to 2-year-olds with the opportunity to learn about the world using their senses. A curriculum focusing on symbolic representation has activities for 2- to 4-year-olds that support the ability to create mental images and to remember them when the object is not immediately in front of them.
According to Esther Wolfson, the Director of the Early Childhood Development Center, an early childhood curriculum needs to address physical development in these skill areas: fine and gross motor; attending or attention; sensory integration (touch, smell, sight, hearing); muscle tone and strength; performance of a physical movement; visual motor (eye hand coordination); grapho motor (using writing instruments); and motor planning (performing unfamiliar motor activities).
The Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning (CSEFEL) created a pyramid model for supporting social emotional development in early childhood. Developing a curriculum to address early childhood social emotional development should include activities that enhance the ability to form close and secure relationships such as: expression of emotions; managing emotions (regulating); social problem solving; understanding emotions; self-control; empathy; anger management; building friendships; following rules; and behavior management.
The National Institute for Literacy has identified several key elements to include in an early childhood curriculum related to literacy. These elements are: holding a book appropriately and turning pages; telling a story from looking at pictures; saying the names of letters in print; saying the sounds letters make; being able to "play" or manipulate the sounds in words (rhyming, changing the first letter sound, ending sound, etc.); and being to write the child's own name or some letters in the name.