The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool: Teaching Guides

The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool Teaching Guides

Note: Implementing these Teaching Guides requires resources from The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool. Don’t have it? Purchase now.

Now, educators have even more choice for implementing engaging, hands-on studies that are relevant to children’s daily lives. Our six studies, Exercise, Music Making, Boxes, Bread, Pets, and Roads, offer comprehensive daily plans that support teachers as they help every child explore, investigate, learn, and succeed with The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool.

Each study guides teachers through the process of conducting 6-week long investigations with children, offering the same detailed guidance found in the other Teaching Guides. Including Book Discussion Cards and children’s books and referencing existing curriculum Daily Resources, our Teaching Guides ensure that teachers can individualize instruction, provide meaningful learning experiences, address essential objectives for development and learning, and successfully involve families.

To support Spanish-speaking children, a “Spanish Book Pack” for each Teaching Guide is available for purchase, offering Book Discussion Cards and related children’s books in Spanish.

The Teaching Guide featuring the Bread Study:

• includes 3 Book Discussion Cards and 3 related children’s books
• 1 nonfiction book, Baking Bread with Grandma
• explores research questions such as “How is bread made?” and “Who works with bread?”
• builds upon children’s innate curiosity around meals and food
• presents cognitive and physical development opportunities as children experiment with recipes and make bread

The Teaching Guide featuring the Pets Study:

• includes 3 Book Discussion Cards and 3 related children’s books
• 1 nonfiction book, The Pets We Love
• explores research questions such as “How do we care for pets?” and “How do pets make us feel?”
• builds on children’s natural interest in watching animals and imitating animals’ movements, sounds, and expressions
• presents social-emotional development opportunities, helping children with understand the importance of taking care of pets, showing affections, being sensitive to others’ needs, and developing lasting friendships

The Teaching Guide featuring the Roads Study:

• includes 3 Book Discussion Cards and 3 related children’s books
• 1 nonfiction book, Discovering Roads
• explores research questions such as “How do roads help people in their everyday lives?” and “How do we stay safe on the road?”
• builds upon features and vocabulary related to roads, such as light poles, reflector bumps, overpasses, bridges, and other features that captivate children’s interest
• provides community extensions, engaging children with people and ideas that help foster children’s innate curiosity around roads and transportation
• offers rich opportunities to support cognitive development through gathering data and understanding the relationship between transportation and people

The Teaching Guide featuring the Music Making Study:

• includes 3 Book Discussion Cards and 3 related children’s books
• 1 nonfiction book, Making Music With Instrument Families
• explores research questions such as “What instruments can we play by hitting, tapping, or shaking them?” and “How can we make music with our voices?”
• builds upon children’s natural interest in music, helping them understand how music is made, learn new ways to generate sound, and perform and experiment with musical instruments
• offers particularly rich cultural and community extensions, allowing family involvement and participation to influence the direction of the study
• provides vocabulary development opportunities as children are introduced to brand-new, music-related words and concepts

The Teaching Guide featuring the Boxes Study:

• includes 3 Book Discussion Cards and 3 related children’s books
• 1 nonfiction book, The Business of Boxes
• explores research questions such as “What can we do with boxes?” and “Which jobs use boxes?”
• builds on a topic of great fascination for young children, who build boxes into special play places, spaceships, castles and caves
• features a wealth of rich opportunities for teaching math, including comparing and measuring and exploring concepts of geometry
• presents cognitive development opportunities as children invent and imagine, problem solve, and learn about new ways to use boxes

The Teaching Guide featuring the Exercise Study:

• includes 3 Book Discussion Cards and 11 related children’s books
• 1 nonfiction book, Exercise: Let's Move and Play
• explores research questions such as “How do our bodies work when we exercise?” “What do our bodies need in order to move?”
• combines young children’s propensity for near-constant motion with their innate curiosity about how things work
• builds on children’s natural desire to move and be active
• helps children develop and understanding of the mechanics of movement and the relationship between exercise and nutrition, healthy bones, and strong muscles

Download a list of all the books included with each Teaching Guide. (PDF)

To learn more about purchasing sets of the Teaching Guides at a special, discounted price, contact your regional sales representative.

For more information about the complete The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool, visit our The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool page or call 1.800.637.3652, Option 6.