Review

Active Exploration: The curriculum provides opportunities for exploration. Indoor and outdoor play, movement experiences, and physical development are embedded across the curriculum. Volumes 1 and 2 include guidance on how designing a well-organized, engaging indoor and outdoor environment support children's development across all domains.

Interactions that Extend Children’s Learning: The Creative Curriculum® for Family Child Care, 3^rd Edition offers strategies to support providers in building positive relationships with children. It embeds interactions into routines and experiences. Materials provide suggestions for questions and ideas for creatively extending learning. Volume 2: Routines and Experiences includes guidance on following children's lead, responding to each child, and extending learning.

Individualization: The curriculum provides specific guidance on how to individualize learning experiences and goals. Volumes 1–3 and Intentional Teaching Cards provide support for individualization throughout the day. Many of the curriculum materials offer guidance on how to assess children's developmental abilities and scaffold them through the next developmental step or millstone in a flexible and responsive manner. The curriculum color codes learning objectives and identifies the objectives sequentially for each learning domain. It provides specific guidance on working with children who are DLLs, children from diverse backgrounds, and children with disabilities or other special needs. The curriculum also provides guidance on how culture may influence children's development in a variety of areas. Mighty Minutes mentions ideas for individualizing activities for age and ability.

Active Exploration: The curriculum provides some examples of encouraging active exploration throughout the curriculum (e.g., Working Together; How Fast Can You?). It does not address free play or child-initiated play and learning. Activities provided primarily promote language development, open ended art, and sensory experience for all age groups. A list of developmentally appropriate learning materials that foster open ended exploration and inquiry are included throughout the curriculum (e.g., "Warm and Cold Water Play" lists strainers, ladles, funnels, bowls, plastic cooking spoons, etc. in the Awesome Opposites unit). However, the curriculum lacks guidance on indoor and outdoor safety or active physical exploration and heavily promotes adult-led activities.

Interactions that Extend Children’s Learning: The curriculum provides some examples of extending children's learning. Awesome Opposites and Rockin' Rhymes include extension activities for children to have opposite times and note rhyming words. Monthly units include an "Add and Enhance" page and a Letters and Literacy packet that support extending learning. Interactions that extend children's learning are described individually in adult-led activities of monthly units. However, sequenced learning is not addressed.

Individualization: Gee Whiz Education Curriculum 2019–2020 User's Guide, The Learning Environment & the Gee Whiz Curriculum, and "Get Ready" page at the beginning of monthly units provide suggestions for adapting and modifying activities to suit the developmental needs of children. The User's Guide offers an overview of individualizing the curriculum using a five-step approach: Observe and record; reflect on observation; plan experiences; do; reflect again. While there are anecdotal observation and planning tools to support observation and reflection, the curriculum lacks guidance on determining each child's developmental ability in activities within monthly units (e.g., Individualization Web; Customized/Individual Lesson Plan). Additionally, the curriculum lacks cultural and linguistic supports and instruction for individualized interactions.