This talk will introduce the Ecological Learning framework, which focuses on children’s ability to adapt and tailor their active learning strategies to the particular structure and characteristics of a learning environment. In particular, I will present the results of several seminal studies indicating that efficient, adaptive search strategies emerge around 3 years of age, much earlier than previously assumed. This work highlights the importance of developing age-appropriate paradigms that capture children's early competence to gain a more comprehensive and fair picture of their active learning abilities. Also, it offers a process-oriented theoretical framework that can accommodate and reconcile a sparse but growing body of work documenting children’s active and adaptive learning.