Personal Narrative Early Childhood Curriculum

I will be examining, analyzing, and reflecting on multiple early childhood curriculums, which include Creative Curriculum, Tools of the Mind Curriculum, Montessori Curriculum, and the High Scope Curriculum. My favorite curriculum that we have learned about this semester is Creative Curriculum. This is because I have experienced aspects of it at CPNS and feel as though it closely matches my own teaching philosophy. The other three curriculums do have teaching goals and values that also closely match my teaching philosophy, but not as well as the Creative Curriculum does. Creative Curriculum’s philosophy is that young children learn the best by doing. Learning requires active thinking and experimenting to find out how things work and function

Creative Curriculum fosters symbolic thinking because children tend to use their imagination to compare play materials that are similar in shape to the object they are representing ("Foundation for Early Childhood Education, Inc."). For example, a block may represent a brownie or a Lego structure may represent a train. Through play, children become able to use words to describe their thoughts and feelings and are able to read pictures, which are symbols of real life people, places, and things. Creative Curriculum’s main goal is to help children become independent, self-confident, and inquisitive learners ("Foundation for Early Childhood Education, Inc."). There are four specific goals in development that the Creative Curriculum focuses on, which include social development, emotional development, cognitive development, and physical development. The teacher’s role in Creative Curriculum is to utilize various interest areas and allow children to learn and grow through free play. They also use numerous strategies to motivate children’s learning and increase the child’s understanding and knowledge about the real world. They create a classroom that encourages exploration, varies the

Play is the child’s work in Montessori schools. Children learn at their own pace using specific self-corrective manipulatives (Terca "Montessori Education"). It is the child’s job to find their way into the materials that are provided for them. The classroom is not organized according to a specific age. Classrooms tend to be mixed in age ranging from three, four, and five year olds. The children will work with materials that are appropriate for their individual level. The teacher’s role in this curriculum is to use observation to guide and help children learn and develop at their own rate. Teachers are minimally involved with student’s work. They may recommend similar activities that may interest the child, but they feel as though students gain more knowledge by working hands-on with materials and observing their classmates. The teachers are trained to ask guiding questions while teaching students instead of simply providing answers. This helps develop the student’s self-esteem and self-confidence. The student’s role in this curriculum is to play in a specific subject area and to spend as much time as necessary participating in those activities. Not every student is doing the same activity in Montessori classrooms. This is a great opportunity to learn from others, but sometimes can cause conflicts. Students must put their hands behind their back and ask to observe other students