Review

Scope: Beautiful Beginnings clearly identifies eight areas of development: Communication, Gross Motor, Fine Motor, Intellectual, Discovery, Social, Self-Help, and Pretend. The curriculum manual provides several "Experiences" to support each of these areas of development.

Sequence: The curriculum manual provides multiple, related learning opportunities for children to explore and learn concepts and skills in all ELOF domains. The "Experiences" are organized by age (e.g., 0–6 months, 6–12 months, 12–18 months) and around the curriculum's eight areas of development. They can be used to progressively build children's concepts and skills as they move through the developmental progressions in all domains. The curriculum describes the "Experiences" as a menu of ideas that can be selected based on each child's unique development, strengths, needs, and interests, demonstrating that the sequences of learning experiences allow for flexibility.

Scope: The curriculum clearly identifies six content areas: Approaches to Learning; Social and Emotional Development; Physical Development and Health; Communication, Language, and Literacy; Cognitive Development; and Creative Arts. Tender Care and Early Learning describes each of these developmental domains, and Lesson Plans for a Strong Start provides learning experiences to support children's development in these areas.

Sequence: Tender Care and Early Learning uses the curriculum's key developmental indicators (KDIs) to offer a brief description of children's developmental progressions in each domain. The two Lesson Plans for a Strong Start books each provide 30 days of sample lesson plans, which include multiple related learning opportunities for children to explore or learn concepts and skills in all domains. The lesson plans for activities offer scaffolding charts with specific suggestions for how teachers can support and extend children's learning at earlier, middle, and later developmental levels in all domains. Each scaffolding chart relates to multiple KDIs and provides tips to support children's development in an integrated way. In addition, the curriculum offers strategies and tools to support teachers in future planning of learning experiences based on children's interests and development. While the curriculum provides specific examples for 30 days and general guidance on the process thereafter, the curriculum lacks comprehensive guidance or concrete examples to support children in moving through developmental progressions from birth to 36 months in all domains.

Scope: The curriculum clearly identifies five developmental domains: Language Development, Cognitive Development, Social and Emotional Development, Physical Development, and Approaches Toward Learning. Welcome to Frog Street Infant provides information on each of these learning domains, and the Activity Cards provide learning experiences to support children's development in each of these areas.

Sequence: The curriculum provides Activity Cards for Physical, Social Emotional, Language, and Cognitive Development. The activities are organized by age: 0–3 months, 3–6 months, 6–12 months, and 12–18 months. These Activity Cards provide sequences of learning experiences that are based on children's developmental progressions with multiple, related opportunities for children to explore or learn concepts or skills in each domain. Welcome to Frog Street Infant describes how teachers use the Activity Cards to make an individualized weekly plan for each child.

Scope: The curriculum clearly identifies five developmental domains: Language Development, Cognitive Development, Social Emotional Development, Physical Development, and Approaches to Learning. Welcome to Frog Street Toddler provides an overview of each learning domain and "What You Can Do" to support children's development in the learning domains. The Activity Guides provide several examples of learning centers and activities to support children's development in each of these areas.

Sequence: Frog Street Toddler provides a sequence of learning experiences that progressively builds children's knowledge and skills as they move through the developmental progressions in Approaches to Learning and, to some extent, in the domains of Language and Communication and Social and Emotional Development. The curriculum lacks clear sequences of learning experiences that support children's Cognition and Perceptual, Motor, and Physical Development. For example, in the domain of Language and Communication, the curriculum includes three Developmental Storybooks that present a story at three different levels, ranging from simple text to more complex vocabulary and sentence structure, which allow teachers to support children with various levels of receptive language and vocabulary. However, many of the activities that support language development and literacy do not progressively increase in complexity across the Activity Guides (e.g., the language activities in Activity Guide: Theme 2 and Activity Guide: Theme 13 focus on reading the same book with very similar prompts).

In the domains of Cognition and Perceptual, Motor, and Physical Development, the curriculum introduces advanced skills and concepts early in the sequence before building foundational knowledge and skills. For example, an early activity in Activity Guide: Theme 2 invites children to draw their family, count their family members, and match blocks to family members in order to practice one-to-one correspondence. For a young toddler, this is quite an advanced skill. It is built on practicing more foundational skills such as counting and identifying quantity. Yet, the text provides minimal activities that focus on counting or identifying quantity leading up to this activity. Similarly, Activity Guide: Theme 1 invites children to do several complex physical tasks without reference to any prior experiences developing more foundational physical skills (e.g., moving balls on the floor with their chins, putting on their shoes without bending their knees). While Frog Street Toddler provides multiple related opportunities for children to explore or learn concepts and skills in all domains, the sequences of learning experiences in some domains do not fully reflect children's developmental progressions.

Scope: Innovations: The Comprehensive Infant and Toddler Curriculum identifies the following areas of development: physical, emotional, social, and intellectual, which includes language and cognition. While each of the curriculum's books briefly mention these developmental domains, the curriculum does not describe how the suggested teaching practices and learning experiences support children's development and learning in these areas.

Sequence: The two curriculum activity books provide multiple related learning opportunities for children to explore or learn concepts and skills in all ELOF domains. Each chapter includes several activities, or "Possibilities," which specify an age range (e.g., 0–6 months, 6–18 months, 18–24 months). Taken together, these learning experiences can be used to progressively build children's concepts and skills as they move through the developmental progressions in all domains. The sequences of learning experiences allow for flexibility, as teachers are encouraged to plan and implement learning experiences based on children's interests and development.

Scope: The Creative Curriculum^® for Infants, Toddlers & Twos clearly identifies nine areas of development and learning: Social-Emotional, Physical, Language, Cognitive, Literacy, Mathematics, Science and Technology, Social Studies, and the Arts. Cognitive development encompasses the Approaches to Learning ELOF domain. Volumes 1–3 provide an overview of young children's development as well as specific teaching practices to support children's development and learning in each of these areas.

Sequence: The curriculum provides guidance within activities on how to support children as they move through the developmental progressions. The Intentional Teaching Cards describe activities in the domains of Language and Literacy, Mathematics, Social-Emotional, and Physical Development. These activities provide evidence of sequence in all five ELOF domains. Each activity includes a "Teaching Sequence" to support children at different levels of the developmental progressions specified in Volume 3: Objectives for Development & Learning. This allows teachers to individualize activities to meet the strengths and needs of each child. Additionally, teachers can use the Mighty Minutes, Book Conversation Cards, and guidance provided in Volumes 1–3 to offer multiple related learning opportunities for children to explore concepts and skills in all domains.