Early Head Start - A federally funded program that provides comprehensive developmental services to low income children ages 6 weeks to 3 years and social services for their families. Services may be delivered in centers and family day care homes. Comprehensive services address education, health, nutrition, and social factors of development.

Early care and education - Any part-day or full-day group program in a center, home, school, or other facility that serves children birth through school age.

Early intervention - A Department of Public Health (DPH) sponsored comprehensive, community-based program of integrated developmental services that uses a family-centered approach to facilitate the developmental progress of at-risk children between birth and three years old.

Emerging literacy - The developmental process through which children become literate, including speaking, reading, and writing

Emotional abuse - Acts of commission or omission on a child by a parent or parent substitute that result in emotional harm to the child

Encoding - Process of representing sounds with letters and spoken words with written words

Environment - The complete makeup of the parts of your home or center and yard in which you care for children, including furnishings, toys, and planned activities

Ethics - A set of principles, standards, or guidelines that direct acceptable behavior – what is right or good rather than quickest or easiest

Evacuation Plan - A plan, posted where parents can see it, designating how the provider will respond to get children to safety in an emergency

Eye-hand coordination - The ability to direct finger, hand, and wrist movements to accomplish a fine motor task – for example, fitting a peg in a hole, stacking blocks, or building a Lego castle