Review

Individualization Based on Interests: The Creative Curriculum® for Family Child Care, 3^rd Edition provides guidance on individualization based on the interests of children. Volume 1: The Foundation promotes choice time, a specific time of the daily schedule for children to choose what they would like to do, who they want to play with, and what materials to use. Child Planning Forms, Individual Differences in Volumes 1 and 2, Book Conversation Cards, Mighty Minutes, and Intentional Teaching Cards provide support on responsiveness to children's interests and activities.

Individualization Based on Strengths and Needs: The curriculum's materials provide information on assessing children's abilities and scaffolding them through the developmental steps in a flexible and responsive manner (e.g., Child Planning Forms, Individual Differences, Intentional Teaching Cards). Learning objectives are color-coded and identified sequentially for each learning domain. This allows providers to scaffold for strengths and needs within an activity or experience to adapt to ages and needs. 

Mixed Age Groups: The curriculum offers guidance on supporting learning within mixed age groups. Intentional Teaching Cards provide support and step-by-step sequences for providers to adapt activities for children at different developmental levels and ages. Progressions of developmental learning are shown in color-coded charts (e.g., Red for infants, green for preschool, purple for kindergarten). Volume 1: The Foundation includes information on the developmental characteristics of children, from infants to school age. It also has ideas and strategies for providers to support children at different developmental levels. Book Conversation Cards provide guidance on sharing the Highlights Hello book collection with children by ages and stages (e.g., young infants, mobile infants, toddlers, 2-year-olds).
 

Individualization Based on Interests: The Gee Whiz Curriculum for Family Child Care offers no guidance on how to plan for learning experiences that build on the interests of individual children. Curriculum materials support collecting information through observation and providers' use of anecdotal notes. Activities within monthly units are adult-led and do not allow for free play.

Individualization Based on Strengths and Needs: The curriculum provides general guidance and minimal examples of individualizing based on children's strengths and needs. Gee Whiz Education Curriculum 2019–2020 User's Guide provides an overview of individualizing the curriculum using a five-step approach: Observe and record; reflect on observation; plan experiences; do; reflect again. The guidance provided is applicable to all children regardless of background, DLL status, and ability. However, the curriculum provides minimal guidance on planning learning experiences that build on the interest of individual children.

Mixed Age Groups: The curriculum offers some guidance for supporting learning within mixed age groups. The Gee Whiz Education Curriculum 2019–2020 User's Guide encourages providers to modify and adjust daily activities and experiences to meet individual needs and interests of children in the home. It provides some guidance on individualizing the curriculum. Activities within monthly units specify an age group for each activity (e.g., "Paper Towel Rolls & Paint" activity for toddlers–age 4 and "Paint Without the Mess" activity for infants in the Creative Me unit). The User's Guide provides an overview of a five-step approach to individualizing activities presented to children. However, the curriculum provides minimal guidance within monthly units and activities for providers to support learning within mixed age groups.