Every learning module was reviewed, topic by topic, against the published research on how young children learn to read, count, and think — the same evidence base schools and teacher-training programs use. Here’s what we teach, how, and the sources behind it.
🔤Reading & letters
Modules: Letters, Sight Words, Rhyming, Sentences
Letters are taught with systematic, explicit phonics — letter sounds before letter names do the reading work. Sight words are taught by decoding their regular parts and flagging only the truly irregular bits (the “Heart Word” approach), not by whole-word flashcard memorization. Rhyming builds the phonological awareness that reading research identifies as a key precursor skill, and sentence work is oral-first.
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- National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching Children to Read. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
- Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1).
- Piasta, S. B., & Wagner, R. K. (2010). Developing early literacy skills: A meta-analysis of alphabet learning and instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 45(1).
- Melby-Lervåg, M., Lyster, S.-A. H., & Hulme, C. (2012). Phonological skills and their role in learning to read. Psychological Bulletin, 138(2).
- Hochman, J. C., & Wexler, N. (2017). The Writing Revolution. Jossey-Bass.
- Common Core State Standards, ELA (Kindergarten strand).
👂Hearing sounds & building words
Modules: Beginning Sounds, Word Building
Beginning Sounds is ears-only on purpose: phonemic awareness — hearing that “sun” starts with /s/, clapping word parts, blending /c/ /a/ /t/ into cat — is a listening skill, and the research panels place it among the strongest preschool predictors of learning to read. Blending is taught before segmenting, matching how the skill actually develops. Word Building is the payoff: children assemble real words from letter sounds, starting with short-a word families and reaching blends and digraphs. Building words (encoding) isn’t just spelling practice — kindergarten studies show it directly strengthens early reading.
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- National Reading Panel (2000). Teaching Children to Read. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
- National Early Literacy Panel (2008). Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. National Institute for Literacy.
- Anthony, J. L., & Francis, D. J. (2005). Development of phonological awareness. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(5).
- Foorman, B., et al. (2016). Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade (IES Practice Guide, NCEE 2016-4008). U.S. Dept. of Education.
- Ehri, L. C. (2005). Learning to read words: Theory, findings, and issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9(2).
- Treiman, R. (1985). Onsets and rimes as units of spoken syllables. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 39(1).
- Ouellette, G., & Sénéchal, M. (2017). Invented spelling in kindergarten as a predictor of reading and spelling in Grade 1. Developmental Psychology, 53(1).
🔢Early math
Modules: Numbers, Counting, Telling Time, Shapes
Counting follows the five counting principles from developmental psychology — one-to-one correspondence, stable order, and cardinality (“the last number you say IS how many”) are taught explicitly, alongside subitizing (recognizing small amounts at a glance). Sequencing follows the learning-trajectories research that underpins most modern early-math curricula. Shape lessons teach properties (sides, corners), not just names, following the van Hiele levels of geometric thinking.
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- Gelman, R., & Gallistel, C. R. (1978). The Child’s Understanding of Number. Harvard University Press.
- Sarnecka, B. W., & Carey, S. (2008). How counting represents number. Cognition, 108(3).
- Clements, D. H. (1999). Subitizing: What is it? Why teach it? Teaching Children Mathematics, 5(7).
- Clements, D. H., & Sarama, J. (2014). Learning and Teaching Early Math: The Learning Trajectories Approach (2nd ed.). Routledge.
- Frye, D., et al. (2013). Teaching Math to Young Children. IES Practice Guide, U.S. Dept. of Education.
- van Hiele, P. M. (1986). Structure and Insight. Academic Press.
- Clements, D. H., Swaminathan, S., Hannibal, M. A. Z., & Sarama, J. (1999). Young children’s concepts of shape. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 30(2).
- Common Core State Standards, Math (K.CC counting & cardinality; 1.MD.3 time).
📏Measuring & comparing
Modules: Measurement
Children compare directly — taller or shorter, heavier or lighter, holds more or less — with no rulers and no units, because the learning-trajectories research (validated experimentally in kindergarten classrooms) puts direct comparison first and unit measurement around first grade. Comparison pictures are drawn to true relative scale so children compare with their eyes, not from memory, and the trickiest questions separate “big” from “heavy” — the conceptual leap that matters most at this age.
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- Clements, D. H., & Sarama, J. (2014). Learning and Teaching Early Math: The Learning Trajectories Approach (2nd ed.). Routledge.
- Sarama, J., & Clements, D. H. (2009). Early Childhood Mathematics Education Research: Learning Trajectories for Young Children. Routledge.
- Sarama, J., Clements, D. H., Baroody, A. J., et al. (2021). Testing a theoretical assumption of a learning-trajectories approach in teaching length measurement to kindergartners. AERA Open, 7.
- Common Core State Standards, Math (K.MD.1–2: describe and directly compare measurable attributes).
🖐️The body, the senses & healthy habits
Modules: Five Senses, Healthy Habits
The five senses are taught as sense–organ–example mappings and then put to work in real scenarios — including the safety senses (smelling smoke, hearing a horn), following the Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework’s science and safety strands. Healthy Habits keeps claims practical and positive: brushing morning and night, washing hands at the moments that matter, sleep as how your body rests and grows, “grow foods vs. sometimes foods” (never diet talk or shaming), and daily movement. The hygiene emphasis is evidence-backed — community studies show handwashing meaningfully cuts tummy bugs and colds.
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- Head Start (2015). Early Learning Outcomes Framework. U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services.
- Paruthi, S., et al. (2016). Recommended amount of sleep for pediatric populations: A consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 12(6).
- Aiello, A. E., Coulborn, R. M., Perez, V., & Larson, E. L. (2008). Effect of hand hygiene on infectious disease risk in the community setting: A meta-analysis. American Journal of Public Health, 98(8).
- CDC. When and How to Wash Your Hands (handwashing guidance).
- American Dental Association. Brushing your teeth (2 minutes, twice a day).
🪙First money sense
Modules: Money
Research on early financial capability finds that core money habits start forming well before age seven — and that what this age needs is concepts, not arithmetic: what coins are, that they have different values, that you trade them for things. Children learn US coin names and values, compare them, and count one coin type at a time with skip-counting support. Mixed-coin arithmetic is deliberately held back until our rebuilt Addition module ships, so no child is asked to compute sums they haven’t been taught.
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- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2016). Building Blocks to Help Youth Achieve Financial Capability: A New Model and Recommendations.
- Whitebread, D., & Bingham, S. (2013). Habit Formation and Learning in Young Children. Money Advice Service / University of Cambridge.
- Berti, A. E., & Bombi, A. S. (1988). The Child’s Construction of Economics. Cambridge University Press.
- Common Core State Standards, Math (K.CC counting & cardinality — the counting base under coin counting).
💗Feelings & self-awareness
Modules: Feelings
Emotion vocabulary is taught basic-before-complex (happy, sad, mad, scared before frustrated or proud), matching the order in which preschoolers actually acquire emotion labels. Recognizing and naming a feeling comes before managing it — the same self-awareness-first sequence used by school social-emotional learning frameworks.
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- CASEL (2020). CASEL’s SEL Framework. Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning.
- Widen, S. C., & Russell, J. A. (2003). Preschoolers’ freely produced emotion labels. Developmental Psychology, 39(1).
- Izard, C., et al. (2001). Emotion knowledge as a predictor of social behavior and academic competence. Psychological Science, 12(1).
- Denham, S. A. (1998). Emotional Development in Young Children. Guilford Press.
🌍Science & the world
Modules: Weather, Animals, Body Parts, Days of the Week
World-knowledge modules follow the kindergarten strands of the Next Generation Science Standards — weather as something you observe and describe, animal parents and babies, body parts by name and function. Days of the week are taught as a cycle a child can anchor to real routines, informed by research on how young children actually develop a sense of time (and on the limits of rote calendar drills).
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- NGSS Lead States (2013). Next Generation Science Standards (K-ESS2-1; 1-LS3-1).
- Henriques, L. (2002). Children’s ideas about weather. School Science and Mathematics, 102(5).
- Inagaki, K., & Hatano, G. (2002). Young Children’s Naïve Thinking about the Biological World. Psychology Press.
- Head Start (2015). Early Learning Outcomes Framework. U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services.
- Friedman, W. J. (1986). The development of children’s knowledge of temporal structure. Child Development, 57(6).
- Beneke, S. J., Ostrosky, M. M., & Katz, L. G. (2008). Calendar time for young children: Good intentions gone awry. Young Children, 63(3).
🧩Thinking skills
Modules: Patterns, Sorting, Comparison, Spatial, Opposites, Matching
Patterning is taught as early algebra — children learn to find the unit that repeats, not just to chant sequences. Sorting and matching build the classification skills developmental psychology places at the root of logical thinking. Spatial language (over, under, beside) gets explicit attention because research links early spatial talk to later math ability, and opposites are taught in the polarity order children acquire them.
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- Rittle-Johnson, B., et al. (2015). Beyond numeracy in preschool: Adding patterns to the equation. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 31.
- Papic, M. M., Mulligan, J. T., & Mitchelmore, M. C. (2011). Assessing the development of preschoolers’ mathematical patterning. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 42(3).
- Newcombe, N. S. (2010). Picture this: Increasing math and science learning by improving spatial thinking. American Educator, 34(2).
- Verdine, B. N., et al. (2017). Links between spatial and mathematical skills across the preschool years. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 82(1).
- Clark, E. V. (1972). On the child’s acquisition of antonyms in two semantic fields. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(6).
- Gentner, D., & Namy, L. L. (1999). Comparison in the development of categories. Cognitive Development, 14(4).
🎨Colors
Modules: Colors
Color words are famously hard for toddlers — the research shows children need the word and the property linked across many varied examples. Lessons name colors across different objects rather than one fixed picture per color.
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- Sandhofer, C. M., & Smith, L. B. (1999). Learning color words involves a system of mappings. Developmental Psychology, 35(3).
🏫How every lesson is structured
Modules: All modules
Every module follows the gradual-release arc used in classrooms: the lesson teaches and models, guided slides practice together, then independent practice questions check mastery. Difficulty adapts per skill, and mastery levels (bronze, silver, gold) require sustained accuracy — not one lucky answer.
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- Pearson, P. D., & Gallagher, M. C. (1983). The instruction of reading comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8(3).
- National Research Council (2009). Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood: Paths Toward Excellence and Equity. National Academies Press.
Addition and Subtraction modules are being rebuilt on the concrete-representational-abstract research for math operations and will return after launch — you’ll see them marked “Coming Soon” on the Math map.