The Creative Curriculum
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Guidance with a hands on approach to learning! |
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What is the Creative Curriculum?
It is an approach to teaching young children by being creative, using spontaneity, and the ability to see and use everyday opportunities to help children solve problems,explore new materials, and find answers to questions.
The Creative Curriculum focuses on interest areas.These interest areas, or "learning centers" are designed to support children's development.
The learning centers include:
Blocks Center
Dramatic Play Center
Manipulative's Center
Creativity Center
Sensory Table Center
Library Center
Music and Movement Center
Science Center
Outdoor Center
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These are a few of the activities that the children enjoy each day. Each activity builds on developmental skills that are learned during "functional play". Functional play is typical of children from six months to six years of age. In functional play, children explore and examine the functions and properties of objects and materials in their environment. They examine how things feel, taste, smell, and sound, and what they do. When children are encouraged to explore and discover, their curiosity is heightened and they are motivated to learn more.
We have created an environment to help promote functional play. Our classrooms are carefully designed with children in mind. The environment is interesting and challenging, filled with materials and objects that attract children and inspire their explorations.
Diana Trister Dodge/Laura J. Colker. The Creative Curriculum:third EditionCopyright 2000
Learning centers are areas within a classroom with a collection of activities and materials. These materials are related by subject, purpose, or projected skills. These activities and materials are used independently by the children, or with teacher direction, to reinforce and/or enrich one or more skills or concepts. Learning centers are an excellent way to individualize the curriculum to meet the varying needs of young children.
The Importance of Learning Centers:
* To encourage discovery and exploration: children learn by doing.
* To provide multiple techniques and methods to meet different learning styles.
* To allow for teaching in small groups or one-on-one.
* To provide positive reinforcement.
* To develop a sense of responsibility in the children.
* To structure children´s interaction: they are encouraged to verbalize and develop social relationships, including sharing.
* To allow children to make decisions: the children choose an activity that meets their personal needs and goals.
Before the Bell Preschool
Kindergarten Readiness Program for ages 2-5
Before the Bell Preschool Curriculum is based on a sequential readiness program designed to expose children to a variety of activities necessary for kindergarten readiness. Age-appropriate, developmental activities are used to help children gain beginning knowledge (not mastery) of the concepts they need for success in kindergarten.
Phonics: Recognition of all letter names and their sounds
Literacy: Use a variety of ways to communicate ideas,use beginning reading and writings kills, acquire a love for literature, develop oral language skills, increase vocabulary,prediction,recognize objects, colors, and shapes, sequence events, rhyme, dictate stories
Writing: writing name, letters, numbers, drawing shapes, representational pictures,
Mathematics: mathematical relationships, patterns, sorting,classifying, graphs, measuring, understand time concepts,finding solutions to problems. Recognizing numbers, counting through 20, matching numbers
Science: understand the relationship between growth and change, observe and make discoveries using all senses, classify by similarities and differences, prediction,animals, insects, climate
Health: Food groups, cleanliness, oral hygiene, sleeping habits, identifying body parts
Safety: Playground safety, community safety, phone numbers,fire safety,poison safety, transportation safety
Social Skills: Working as a group, manners, sharing, team projects, expressing feeling,develop independence,develop a lifelong sense of self-confidence, learn how to resolve conflicts in a verbal manner, and how to approach other children in a positive way,learn how to take turns,
Social Studies:Community awareness,appreciation of cultural diversity,identify roles people play in society.Identify common events and celebrations/holidays.
Art: Enhance creativity,focus on process not end product, use of art tools, understand cause and effect, label shapes and objects, solving problems,
Music & Movement: promote an appreciation for diverse music,explore many ways a body can move,develop large motor skills,balance coordination, and rhythm.
Click on these helpful links below for more information on how our curriculum works!
Play is Learning
How children develop
Learning through Play...A child's Job
Child's Play
Parents Make the Difference!