A considerable amount of learning, especially in the early years, is incidental learning. What is incidental learning? It is learning that occurs simply through exposure to the environment--what people hear, see, and experience. It takes place in the natural course of events, without intentionally directed instruction about how or what to learn. It is now well-established that background knowledge is a substantial factor in developing literacy, and the breadth of a child's background knowledge depends largely on incidental learning. Incidental learning includes factual information as well as abstract concepts such as categories, cause and effect, symbols, and time. In this article, the author discusses visual techniques for teaching the concepts of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, especially for children who are Deaf. (Contains 1 resource.)