From Basketball to the Beatles: In Search of Compelling Early Childhood Curriculum

For pre-school or primary teachers looking for compelling curriculum, the search has ended. According to Ben Mardell, the best ideas can be found with your students and enthusiasm is the key ingredient. His text describes some of the projects he created by tapping into children’s interests - and the results are both instructive and galvanizing. This guide provides both the big picture about work in early childhood classrooms - the theory of teaching young children - and the details of developing and implementing pre-school curriculum. Each chapter describes a specific curriculum unit on topics ranging from squirrels to storytelling, astronomy to South Africa, and basketball to the Beatles. Each unit is followed by field-tested suggestions for exploring the topic, including art projects, movement activities, songs, group time activities, dramatic play props, stories and field trips. There are also lists of resources at the end of each chapter to help teachers implement the curriculum. Embedded within each chapter are guiding principles for curriculum development and implementation. Included are thoughts on using stories to bring topics to life, tapping children’s fantasy and play to further inquiry, understanding students and guiding their activities, teaching skills as a natural part of study, building a community of learners, and much more.