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Our chapter sheds light on the Perry and many other school entry puzzles by turning to theory as well as other empirical studies investigating links between young children's skills and behaviors and their later attainments. We begin with a conceptual framework for understanding the early skills. We argue that the skill categories of “cognitive” and “non-cognitive” used by many economists are both too simplistic and inaccurate. “Cognitive” skills mix together mental acuity (i.e., IQ) with concrete achievement skills such as knowing letters, beginning word sounds and numbers. “Noncognitive” skills encompass a wide variety of diverse capacities such as paying attention (an inherently cognitive task!), getting along with classmates and teachers, and good mental health. We propose and defend the early-skill trichotomy of: achievement, attention and problem behavior and mental health, while at the same time acknowledging that each of these broad categories are related, and can be broken down further into more narrowly defined component parts.