We begin by understanding the four categories of learning that are relevant to the education of young children:

Knowledge:
In early childhood, knowledge consists of facts, concepts, ideas, vocabulary, and stories. A child acquires knowledge from someone's answers to his questions, explanations, descriptions and accounts of events as well as through observation.

Skills:
Skills are small units of action which occur in a relatively short period of time and are easily observed or inferred. Physical, social, verbal, counting and drawing skills are among a few of the almost endless number of skills learned in the early years. Skills can be learned from direct instruction and improved with practice and drill.

Dispositions:
Dispositions can be thought of as habits of mind or tendencies to respond to certain situations in certain ways. Curiosity, friendliness or unfriendliness, bossiness, and creativity are dispositions or sets of dispositions. Dispositions are not learned through instruction or drill. The dispositions that children need to acquire or to strengthen--curiosity, creativity, cooperation, friendliness--are learned primarily from being around people who exhibit them. A child who is to learn a particular disposition must have the opportunity to behave in a manner that is in keeping with the disposition. If that occurs, then the child's behavior can be responded to, and thus strengthened. Teachers can reinforce certain dispositions by setting learning goals rather than performance goals. A teacher who says, "Let's see how much we can find out about something," rather than, "I want to see how well you can do," encourages children to focus on what they are learning rather than on their performance.

Feelings:
These are subjective emotional states, many of which are innate. Among those that are learned are feelings of competence, belonging, and security. Feelings about school, teachers, learning and other children are also learned in the early years.

Children Learn Through Interaction
Contemporary research confirms the view that young children learn most efficiently when they are engaged in interaction rather than in merely receptive or passive activities. Young children should be interacting with adults, materials and their surroundings in ways which help them make sense of their own experience and environment. They should be investigating and observing aspects of their environment worth learning about, and recording their findings and observations in discussion, paintings and drawings. Interaction that arises in the course of such activities provides a context for much social and cognitive learning.

Observing Children’s Learning Styles
In your classroom you observe a four-year-old in the block area is creating a house, while his friend carefully balances each addition to The Tallest Building in the World. Or you notice a three-year-old splashing away water at the table; while another child keeps punching dough in the kitchen area to get it into the shape of her choice. Action, reaction, concentration, problem solving, decision making, joy – whether your classroom or your home – the atmosphere is alive with discovery as children approach learning opportunities in countless ways.

Children may be sharing the same class or the same house, they investigate, learn, and process using a combination of several different approaches and learning styles. The learning styles presented here are not measures of intelligence or descriptions of temperament; rather, they are a way of describing children's different approaches to living and learning. One day a child may jump in without hesitation and try something totally new; another time, that same child may hold back just a little, needing to watch what is happening and size things up before getting involved. Both approaches are fine; the child is finding out what works for her/him in a particular situation.

Let's look at some of the different approaches to learning, keeping in mind that this is a time in the lives of young children when they should be encouraged to explore, shift, combine, and enjoy their learning styles and interests.