Creative Curriculum for Infants, Toddlers and Two Year Olds
Infants should feel free to interact, explore and discover.
Toddlers should feel free to have independence to be curious while building skills and coordination.
What is The Creative Curriculum® for Infants, Toddlers & Twos? Think, just for a moment, about the everyday discoveries that delight young children. From the colors dancing on the wall as light passes through a prism, to the jingling bells in a toy, to the amazing accomplishment of a first step—the everyday moments in an infants, toddlers, and twos classroom are at the heart of what makes our teacher’s work so special and important.
The Creative Curriculum® for Infants, Toddlers & Twos provide theory, research, and best practices for providing responsive teaching and caring for very young children. This curriculum we proudly use helps our teachers put knowledge into practice and foster children’s learning and growth. It is designed to help teachers and caregivers implement developmentally appropriate practices and offer responsive daily routines and meaningful experiences that nurture this learning and development.
The Creative Curriculum® for Infants, Toddlers & Twos has routines and experiences at its center. That’s because the routines and experiences that structure each day, and the responsive care and teaching provided during these times, are what enable children to develop a secure attachment with the important people in their lives and gain confidence in themselves as learners. Teachers and caregivers use routine times to nurture children’s curiosity, help them feel secure, and create a language rich environment full of warm, loving, and meaningful interactions. This is what helps build the foundation for children’s future success in school and in life. It focuses on daily experiences, offering guidance on engaging children in playing with toys, imitating and pretending, enjoying books and stories, creating with art, and much more. It helps teachers and caregivers with the daily experiences they provide, while giving them the flexibility to respond to the changing interests, abilities, and needs of the children in their care.
Even though school is a few years away for young children, the foundation for future development and learning is established in these very important early years.
Creative curriculum focuses on these areas of child development: social–emotional, cognitive, physical,and language. It is these areas in which teachers and caregivers are likely to see the most growth and progress with the children in their care. Other areas focus on content learning, which has its roots even in these younger years. While some of these skills are ones that children will begin acquiring in preschool, teachers and caregivers can support content learning from infancy by creating a language rich environment; building trusting relationships; and individualizing the experiences that they provide throughout the day on the basis of children’s strengths, needs, and interests.
