UPK Curriculum Checklist & Guidance

Still looking into a Pre-K/TK curriculum? This CDE guide helps educators ensure developmentally appropriate and informed environments and instructional strategies. The guide offers essential components and strategies that should be included in a selected curriculum to develop critical thinking skills, scaffold individual children’s knowledge and skill-building, and instill inclusivity and love for learning .

This document explores why worksheets for preschoolers and TK children should not be used as a main instruction tool or evidence of learning at home and in programs. Alternative activities to build key school readiness skills are offered.

"What Am I Learning?" Posters

Young children need to play! A resource for parents and adults, these posters describe the skills that children learn through various types of play. Hang them in your classrooms, at the different learning centers, or give them out to parents at orientation, during back-to-school night, and more!

Transition to Elementary Toolkit

Transitions can be tough on children and families. This toolkit provides county, district, and local leaders providing services to ECE, UPK, and TK-12 with system-wide tools and strategies to make the transition from early learning to elementary more cohesive. 

ACOE Toilet Guidance Quick Reference 

ACOE's quick reference provides tips and considerations for the educators to support a child's toileting journey

This toolkit is to provide guidance and information to local educational agencies (LEAs) and community-based organizations (CBOs) on best practices for supporting California’s youngest learners as they develop and master toileting independence. This resource offers information for LEAs and CBOs to consider as they review and potentially revise their toileting policies and practices to accommodate the inclusion of younger learners, and learners with varied developmental needs, in their programs, including through intentional partnerships with families.

California Preschool/Transitional Kindergarten Learning Foundations

The California Preschool/TK Learning Foundations outline key knowledge and skills that most children can achieve when provided with the kinds of interactions, instruction, and environments that research has shown to promote early learning and development. 

Spanish and Chinese versions now available on the CDE website!

CSPP and TK programs are required to align curriculum to the Foundations. For examples of the PTKLFs in action, head over to our PTKLFs page. 

California Preschool Curriculum Framework

The California Preschool Curriculum Framework presents strategies for early childhood educators that enrich learning and development opportunities for all of California’s preschool children. Applicable to TK classrooms as well.

Framework for Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating P-3 Approaches

The P-3 Framework, comprised of eight major "buckets" of work, will be our pivotal framework as we consider P-3 alignment within our district partners and across our county.

Check out ACOE and our district's P-3 Alignment efforts at our P-3 Alignment page.

TK Implementation Guide: 

A Resource for California Public School District Administrators and Teachers 

This guide includes considerations for the structure and design of TK programs, effective instructional and curricular approaches, and includes the importance of family and community partnerships and systems of support for transitional kindergarten. 

TK California

This website contains a plethora of information parents, teachers, and administrators, including a resource library, latest TK news, and ideas for integrating content in the TK classroom.

CDE UPK Resources

A landing page for UPK implementers, this page contains customizable slide decks, overviews, and branding logos for leaders needing to share UPK information to families and community members. Some materials have been translated into multiple languages.

Creating Equitable Early Learning Environments for Young Boys of Color

This groundbreaking book provides an honest and comprehensive look at the inequitable experiences our youngest Boys of Color have in early learning programs including disproportionate rates of exclusionary discipline (e.g., pushouts, suspensions, and expulsions). This book highlights the critical need to disrupt these patterns and create strengthbased and equity-oriented early childhood environments that support Boys of Color to thrive.

Family Partnerships for Children

A publication providing early childhood education program administrators and teachers with guidance on practices that support the development of partnerships with families and inclusion of children’s cultural experiences as essential parts of planning curriculum. Families can be invaluable partners in early childhood programs’ efforts to enhance early learning and prepare children for school. Because the family’s approach to guiding early development is influenced by adult family members’ culture or cultures, a key aspect of developing partnerships with families is to be responsive to their cultures. This publication promotes understanding of children’s cultural or multicultural experiences at home and helps teachers use those experiences as building blocks for teaching and learning in early education settings. 

Designed to complement the other resources of the California Department of Education’s Early Learning and Development System, this publication examines how play, learning, and curriculum work together in early education. It describes the relationship context for early learning and the role of the teacher in supporting children’s active engagement in learning. This discussion illuminates ways in which learning experiences in one domain may also foster learning in other domains.