Virtually all of my colleagues who teach in Early Childhood (EC) or Early Elementary (EE) settings tell me that rabbinics is not a part of the curriculum that they teach. But the notion that educational experiences must have a text at their center in order for students to be learning rabbinics is not accurate, and it is one that the field of Jewish education should work to change. If we are going to have a principled discussion of when the study of rabbinics should happen, we have to have a better understanding of when it actually does happen. In the earliest years of Jewish education, students are not yet engaged in the formal study of rabbinic texts. But the study of rabbinics actually begins with the youngest learners.