In a real sense, those who develop formal reading/writing programs for five year olds are between a rock and a hard place. Building greater literacy is a matter of considerable importance. Not hurting students is of equal importance. If assumption is made that the most direct avenue to a better start in literacy-formal instruction-is likely to damage the students, then we are stymied. But, it may be that concern about hurting the students are based on images of brutal and primitive curriculum rather than humane and sophisticated approaches. We made the decision that there would be no danger to the students if we proceeded carefully and, particularly, if the teachers tracked the responses of the children systematically and were prepared to back off or modulate if a student appeared to be stressed. Not to challenge students might be larger mistake than challenging them cognitively. Also, we wanted the early experience to be not only effective but joyful-learning to read should be a delightful experience. Our image of a nurturant curriculum appears to differ widely from what many people imaging would be the shape of a curriculum for young children and which causes them to shy away from formal literacy instruction for kindergartens. We old not imaging students with workbooks, alphabet flash cards, or letter-by-letter phonic drills. We imagined an environment where students would progress from their developed listening-speaking vocabularies to the reading of words, sentences, and longer tewxt that they had created, where would begin to write with scribbling and simple illustrations (see Heller, 1991; Temple, Nathan, Temple, and Burris,1993), where they would be read to regularly, and where comprehension strategies would be modelled for them through the reading and study of charming fiction and nonfiction books. If the work of childhood is play, we imagined the students plafully working their way literacy.