What kinds of learning should be provided for a four- or five-year-old child who is beginning a school experience? First, he should have extended opportunity to explore the physical world. He should be helped to become increasingly sensitive to the world in which he lives. We want to provide full opportunity for doing and making. We want to support the developmental tendency in the child to deal with things indirectly, to symbolize them, to reproduce in his own particular way the experiences that have been meaningful for him. Finally, the child must be helped to a skillful and rich use of words and language forms. We must try to understand what really are the basic life deficits of most of the four- and five-year-old children of disadvantaged families and then, after that, think about what adaptations of usual school procedures, or relationships, should be made to meet the children where they are. Three different deficits can be associated with the family life patterns in negative conditions of poverty. First, these children do not have the language skills expected at their stage of development. At home, there may be a lack of close relationships. The third kind of deficit results from psychological uncertainty reinforced by the disorder of the physical environment. (Author/JM)