In Texas, as well as across the nation, many families are keeping 3- to 5-year-old children at home rather than enrolling them in quality early childhood programs offered through districts, childcare centers, early education programs such as Head Start, or churches. As a result, next fall children coming into these programs are likely to have developmental needs that require teachers to reconsider their expectations of readiness for early learners and adjust instruction accordingly. More time may be needed for social-emotional learning, for example, if children have not been in settings where they interacted with other children. A greater emphasis on multi-sensory approaches and on oral language development may be needed as well to ensure children have time to develop foundational emergent literacy skills. As stated by Vukelich & Christie, “An effective pre-kindergarten literacy program is one that provides a balanced curriculum that addresses emerging literacy skills in the context of social-emotional and cognitive developmentally appropriate experiences.” (2004) Learn more about research-based practices for pre-kindergarten by downloading this whitepaper from Learning Without Tears: https://go.lwtears.com/tx-research-review