The Illinois Early Learning Standards were developed by the Illinois State Board of Education with the assistance of hundreds of educators. The goal of the standards is to provide teachers and caregivers useful information that is directly needed as part of their daily classroom work. Based on comments from educators, parents, and various experts to the draft version, this final guide details the standards and guiding principles behind them. The standards are organized to parallel in content the Illinois Learning Standards for K-12 education. Standards are delineated in the learning areas of Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Science, Physical Development and Health, Fine Arts, Foreign Language, and Social/Emotional Development. For each learning area, the guide lists the state goal(s), relevant learning standards, and specific benchmarks. The guide concludes with a list of 58 resources drawn from during development of the standards, lists of project participants and participating school districts, and a benchmark index. (HTH)