The early years of life are an exciting period of growth and change in cognition. Children make sense of the seemingly infinite amount of information the world presents them and develop the cognitive structures that set the stage for a life of learning. In this talk, Vlach will outline how principles from cognitive science can be bridged with developmental and educational psychology to foster new cognitive theories of learning across the lifespan. Critically, this work will demonstrate how bridging fields of research can result in important implications for applied settings, such as in early science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning. The talk will end with a discussion of how to move forward in bridging cognitive science with education.