With our expertise and experiences in teaching language development and early literacy instruction courses at a teacher education college, we argue that it is imperative to find ways to integrate learning standards with developmentally appropriate play-based methods. We examined what literacy coach candidates found in their classroom observations to reveal a tension between developmentally appropriate literacy instruction and addressing conventional literacy skills. We suggest, as do the New York State P-12 Common Core Learning Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy (2011), using developmentally appropriate instruction, such as play-based activities in preschool classrooms, to support emergent literacy.