The Creative Curriculum® for Pre-K - Criterion 2.2

The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K materials partially meet expectations for fostering social orientation and self-identity (2.2a).  

The materials provide some meaningful opportunities for children to explore self-identity. In “The First 6 Weeks: Building Your Classroom Community,” children discover answers to questions by discovering answers to questions such as:

1. Who are the people in our classroom?

2. How can we express our feelings at school?

3. When do things happen at school?

4. What are the rules at school?

5. Who works at our school?

6. How do we make and keep friends at school?

7. How can I do things for myself?

As part of the classroom library setup, the Curriculum Guide instructs teachers to display books featuring families and friendships. For Focus Question 1, Day 1 (on page 18), during the read-aloud of A World of Families, teachers are advised to invite children to point out familiar activities or objects that are important to their own families. After reading, teachers are encouraged to ask, “What do you like to do with your family? Do you play any special games or eat any special foods?” On Day 2 (page 2), in The First 6 Weeks: Building Your Classroom Curriculum, during independent discovery time in dramatic play, teachers are prompted to invite children to pretend to be family members as they engage with peers. 

Each daily plan within the Teaching Guides includes “choice time”.  This includes guided discovery opportunities and independent discovery, offering guidance on activities students may select from, allowing students to build agency and take responsibility. Choice time offers rich opportunities to learn social skills through play and practice. 

Two of the eight Teaching Guides include taught vocabulary related to self-identity: “Getting Ready for Kindergarten” and “The First 6 Weeks of Kindergarten.” In “The First 6 Weeks: Building Your Classroom Community,” students are introduced to Focus Questions that incorporate vocabulary such as kind, unique, and respect.  Similarly, in “Getting Ready for Kindergarten,” Focus Question 1, Days 1, 4, and 5, include words like confident, change, and prepare. The remaining six Teacher Guides do not include vocabulary explicitly focused on self-identity; instead, they emphasize content-specific words. Additionally, in the “Getting Ready for Kindergarten”  Teacher Guide, Focus Question 2, Day 1, teachers are given the following guidance for supporting children to identify emotions: “Use gestures, simple phrases, and facial expressions as you talk with children about what makes them happy and sad throughout the day. “

Materials provide some support in developing awareness of others and in understanding how to relate to and adapt to social situations. The curriculum includes a resource called the 3-step instruction cards, which outline three steps for children to follow independently using both textual and visual explanations. Throughout each study's Teaching Guides, there are opportunities for teachers to incorporate these instruction cards. The activities embedded within the cards build on cognitive and social-emotional support skills. For example, one activity titled “Share a Book” involves three steps: finding a partner, choosing a book together, and exploring the book. Each Teaching Guide also features fiction and non-fiction books that complement the investigations, fostering awareness of others and social adaptability. These texts are optional and classified as supplementary unless listed as the primary read-alouds. There is no guarantee that teachers will include these particular stories in their daily instruction.

There are moderate opportunities to foster children’s positive social orientation and self-identity beyond the first six weeks of instruction. 

•  Mighty Minute Activities, such as MM207 Welcome Friends, where children sing a song  

•  Reminders to teachers, such as Discovering Commonalities, where teachers are prompted to have children share past experiences with videos and help children find commonalities with each other, e.g., “Dillon & Shante’s families take videos of them at the soccer games. Does anyone else play soccer?”

• Turn-taking is supported through Playful Observations.  Teachers are prompted to observe and support children’s turn-taking behaviors during the day. (Architecture TG, pg. 79) 

• Peer leadership/turn-taking. Children take turns leading a group game (“I Spy the Letter…”), rotating leadership among peers. (Cameras TG, pg. 60) 

• “Classroom Jobs” activity (The First Six Weeks TG, Focus Question 7, p. 145)

Overall, The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K materials include meaningful resources and early experiences that support children’s positive social orientation and self-identity, particularly during The First 6 Weeks. Building on this strong foundation, the materials would benefit from more consistent integration of these supports throughout the remainder of the curriculum. Guidance on identity development, emotional understanding, and social relationships is present across studies but is often embedded in optional sidebars, supplemental activities, or teacher reminders rather than in the core instructional sequence. Expanding the intentional focus on self-identity, relationship-building, and social adaptation beyond the initial weeks and more consistently incorporating related vocabulary and activities across the Teaching Guide would strengthen coherence. More systematic integration into daily lesson plans would also support more consistent implementation.

The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K materials partially meet expectations for supporting emotional development and regulation (2.2b). 

The materials provide opportunities to support students in recognizing and expressing emotions through play and practice. For example, the Focus Question “What makes you feel happy?” and Happy and Sad Feelings in Pre-K  (Teacher Guide, The First Six Weeks, p. 29) provide strategies for encouraging children to express and process their emotions in positive ways. Children also have opportunities to recognize and express emotions through Our Feelings Song (SE28), which models emotions like “happy” using photos and facial expressions, provides vocabulary instruction, encourages expression through artwork, and supports responding to teacher questioning. 

There are some opportunities for children to practice and develop the skills of regulating and managing emotional responses. For example, the Intentional Teaching Experience (ITE) Calm-Down Place (SE03). Additional strategies, including breathing exercises (SE29), movement-based impulse control, and frustration management, provide further support for emotional regulation.  

Supplemental resources in Foundations Volume 1 (pp. 69, 75) provide some guidance around spaces in the physical environment where students can be alone when they want.  Positive guidance strategies that support self-regulation are also provided (pp. 152-153) . Foundations Volume 3: Social, Emotional, Physical, and Cognitive Development provides research and strategies for teachers working with children who struggle with emotional skills. However, these supports are primarily located in supporting volumes and resources rather than consistently embedded within the daily instructional guidance. As a result, they are not consistently integrated into core lesson plans or daily routines, leaving teachers to determine when and how to reinforce and extend these skills throughout the day.

Overall, The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K provides some meaningful opportunities for children to recognize, express, and start to manage their emotions through play-based experiences, targeted activities, and teacher-guided strategies, particularly in the early weeks of implementation. Resources such as focus questions, songs, and Intentional Teaching Experiences support emotional awareness and introduce strategies for regulation. Additional guidance and research-based strategies are available within the Foundations volumes, offering educators valuable tools to support students’ emotional development. Building on these strengths, the materials would benefit from more consistent integration of these supports within daily instructional guidance to ensure that opportunities for developing emotional regulation are sustained and systematically embedded across the full curriculum

The Creative Curriculum for Pre-K materials partially meet expectations for supporting problem-solving and conflict resolution (2.2d). 

Materials include multiple, robust, and varied opportunities for children to engage in peer interaction during unstructured play and structured learning. The daily schedule includes Choice Time, Small Group, Outdoors, and Large Group Roundup. These ensure that children have consistent opportunities to interact and collaborate with their peers throughout the instructional day.

The materials provide some resources and guidance to support children in working through problems collaboratively. Volume 1: Foundation frames the classroom community as a place where children learn to cooperate, negotiate, and resolve problems/conflict, and emphasizes that these skills should be encouraged and practiced throughout the day. (Volume 1, p. 149). The Foundations also define problem-solving as a core “process skill” and describe it as identifying a problem, generating solutions, and testing them, thereby supporting the intentional teaching of the full problem-solving cycle. (Volume 1, p. 44). The Foundations identify guiding behavior as including strategies that promote self-regulation and conflict-resolution skills (Volume 1, p. 148–149). Materials provide moderate support to children in developing the skills to understand and solve challenges. Some examples of materials supporting problem-solving and conflict resolution include:

ITEs

• SE24 (I Don’t Like That!) provides a structured Teaching Sequence for cooperative problem-solving with peers (e.g., facilitating turn-taking during shared work and teaching children to share responsibility and incorporate others’ ideas). 

• ITE SE08 (Group Problem-Solving) 

• Mighty Minutes include routines that build emotional understanding (e.g., supporting children in identifying emotions and their causes) and offer participation structures that can be repeated throughout the year. (MM 143 and MM 148 cards accessible online, not included in MM for pre-K box) 

Teacher Guides include: 

• Choice Time guidance prompts teachers to observe whether children can identify social problems, generate solutions, and adjust when a solution fails, which reinforces a full problem-solving process during daily routines (p. 146).  

• Choice Time “Playful Observations” explicitly supports cooperative participation by helping children join peer play (e.g., learning entry language and finding shared interests), thereby reducing conflict and building collaboration (Architecture p. 67). 

• Choice Time “Playful Observations” explicitly targets conflict resolution by prompting teachers to observe how children resolve conflicts and to support children in brainstorming solutions to common classroom social problems (Seeds, p. 67). 

Students have daily opportunities during Choice Time that intentionally support and encourage cooperative play. The materials include some intentional activities focused on conflict resolution, but teacher guidance is often brief and not well integrated into daily routines. For example, the Intentional Teaching Experience: Conflict Resolution provides a scripted approach for helping children calm down and problem-solve, such as prompting children to take deep breaths before rebuilding a block tower together. Additionally, Objective 3 in the Gold Objectives for Development and Learning resource suggests strategies for participating cooperatively and constructively in group situations. However, these supports are not consistently embedded within core lesson plans (p. 22).

For example, teach preschool and older children the steps involved in resolving conflicts: 1. Identify and model how to state the problem.

2. Brainstorm solutions. Discuss possible solutions with the children involved.

3. Evaluate solutions. Use open-ended prompts to help children predict outcomes.

4. Help children choose and try a solution.

5. Help children evaluate the outcome. Discuss what worked and what did not. Encourage children to try other solutions if necessary

Overall, the Creative Curriculum for Pre-K materials supports children’s problem-solving and conflict resolution through consistent opportunities for peer interaction and collaboration embedded throughout the daily schedule. The materials emphasize the importance of cooperative learning and include strategies for teaching problem-solving and for promoting self-regulation. Intentional Teaching Experiences, Mighty Minutes, and Choice Time guidance offer some meaningful opportunities for children to practice these skills in play and practice. Supports are not consistently integrated into daily instruction, and children would benefit from more explicit support in developing the skills to understand and solve challenges.