This report considers preschool children's early literacy-related competencies. The data are from the first 2 years of the Early Childhood Project, a longitudinal investigation following preschool children from different sociocultural groups in Baltimore, Maryland, through their transition into the early years of elementary school. Children were tested in 14 early literacy-related competencies during the spring of both their pre-kindergarten and kindergarten years. The tasks measured aspects of an Orientation towards Print, Phonological Awareness, or Narrative Competence. Some of the tasks used were standard reading readiness measures. A second series of analyses considered the relation between home practices/experiences and emergent literacy development. Children were tested to see whether being brought up in a home predominantly oriented toward the view that literacy is a source of entertainment is more or less likely to develop an Orientation towards Print, Phonological Awareness, of Narrative Competence than a child being brought up in a home where literacy is more typically viewed as a set of skills to be acquired. These different approaches to literacy were derived from parents' answers to questions about how to help foster reading as well as a review of the children's home activities. Taking an approach that literacy is a source of entertainment was positively related to an orientation toward print as well as aspects of narrative competence and phonological awareness. In general, taking the approach that literacy is a set of skills to be learned was either negatively related or not significantly related to the three strands. (Contains 51 references and 15 tables of data.) (Author/RS)