Early education refers to education from birth to preschool in a broad sense, and early learning in a narrow sense. Some countries began to learn reading, writing and calculation ahead of time, and started discussions and experiments in formal education ahead of time. But others think that early education should focus on developing intelligence. Others believe that early education should be extended to prenatal education before the mother is born. Family education has a great influence on early education. Among them, the theory of "three-dimensional balanced development of physical quality, intelligence and psychological ability" is the most scientific. Based on 50 thousand children's growth benchmark data, nine children's growth goals are extracted: security, willpower, sense of purpose, attention, memory, thinking ability, balance, strength and speed.

Early education refers to providing children with targeted guidance and training at the age of 0-6 according to the characteristics of their physical and mental development and sensitive period, laying a good foundation for the cultivation of children's multiple intelligences and healthy personality, paying attention to developing children's potential and promoting their all-round development in language, intelligence, art, emotion, personality and sociality.

There are two views on the division of children's age in early education: early education broadly refers to the education from birth to the age of 6 before entering primary school, and it is an education for children aged 0-6 to promote their harmonious physical and mental development, while ordinary children enter kindergarten at the age of 3, so early education for children aged 3-6 is also called preschool education. Narrow sense mainly refers to the early learning of children aged 0-3.