Review

Learning Goals: Beautiful Beginnings provides measurable, developmentally appropriate learning goals in the curriculum's eight areas of development. Each "Experience" specifies a "Goal," and the learning experiences support the stated goals. The curriculum suggests selecting "Goals" and "Experiences" based on children's interests, strengths, development, needs, and concerns. However, it lacks explicit guidance on how to modify the learning goals for activities to individualize learning experiences for all children.

Learning Goals: The KDIs are measurable, developmentally appropriate learning goals in all six content areas of the curriculum. KDIs are integrated throughout many of the curriculum's materials, which provide teaching practices and learning experiences to support children's progress toward these goals. The curriculum materials emphasize the importance of using the KDIs to individualize interactions and learning experiences for children and provide specific vignettes to demonstrate how to do it. Furthermore, Lesson Plans for a Strong Start includes scaffolding charts related to multiple KDIs. They offer concrete support for caregivers on how to individualize learning experiences based on children's individual abilities and needs.

Learning Goals: The curriculum provides Frog Street Infant Learning Goals, which are measurable and developmentally appropriate. The learning goals are referenced throughout the Activity Cards, and the learning experiences support the stated goals. The curriculum acknowledges infants are at many different stages of development and that some infants may develop faster or slower in a particular domain. However, the curriculum lacks explicit guidance on how to use the learning goals with diverse children or how to modify learning goals for activities to individualize learning experiences for all children.

Learning Goals: The curriculum provides the Frog Street Toddler Learning Goals, which are developmentally appropriate, measurable goals organized around the curriculum's five developmental domains. The learning goals are integrated throughout the Activity Guides in the sections, "Starting the Day" and "Approaches toward Learning." Additionally, the learning goals for the weekly developmental activities are provided in the Lesson Planner forms located on the Assessment and Planning CD. Generally, the weekly developmental activities support the learning goals. However, the Lesson Planners list multiple activities under a set of learning goals, and at times it is unclear which or how activities support the goals. The curriculum lacks guidance on how to use the learning goals with diverse children or how to modify learning goals for activities in order to individualize learning experiences for all children.

Learning Goals: Innovations: The Comprehensive Infant and Toddler Curriculum lacks measurable, developmentally appropriate learning goals. The curriculum is organized around six very broad developmental tasks or challenges that children experience as they learn and grow (e.g., "Separating from Parents," "Expressing Feelings with Parents, Teachers, and Friends"). The tasks are broken down into progressions of specific skills and behaviors, which make up the items in the curriculum's assessment instrument (e.g., "Unpredictable daily schedule," "Separation anxiety emerges"). While these developmental tasks and progressions are embedded throughout the infant and toddler curriculum activity books, the learning experiences provide no clear indication of which skills and behaviors they support or how they do so.

Learning Goals: The Creative Curriculum^® for Infants, Toddlers & Twos includes 36 objectives for development and learning organized into nine areas: Social-Emotional, Physical, Language, Cognitive, Literacy, Mathematics, Science and Technology, Social Studies, and the Arts. The objectives are measurable and developmentally appropriate expectations of the knowledge, skills, and behaviors young children develop and learn. The Intentional Teaching Cards and Mighty Minutes specify objectives for each activity, and the learning experiences supported the stated goals. Volume 3: Objectives for Development & Learning describes how to use the objectives with children with disabilities, suspected delays, or other special needs. It also explains how teachers can use the objectives with children who are DLLs to gather information, no matter which language children use to demonstrate what they know and can do.