The Creative Pre-School
CURRICULUM
The Beyond Centers & Circle Time Curriculum
Titles in the Beyond Centers & Circle Time Curriculum Series
Beyond Centers & Circle Time:
Scaffolding and Assessing the Play
of Young Children
Beyond Cribs & Rattles:
Playfully Scaffolding the Development of Infants and Toddlers
Beyond Differences & Diagnoses:
The Celebration of Inclusion for
All Children
Beyond Centers & Circle Time Curriculum Pre-Kindergarten
Theme Series
Beyond Centers and Circle Time is a play-based curriculum designed to provide caregivers with explicit ideas for creating loving, playful, and stimulating experiences for young children age birth through kindergarten. This curriculum has been practiced and perfected through over 30 years of use by the staff and children of The Creative Pre-School. Based on the theories of Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, and Anna Freud, Beyond Centers & Circle Time (BCCT) is research based through over 25 years of data collected on children with and without disabilities attending the Creative Pre-School. BCCT focuses on the intensity and density of well-planned, organized, and scaffolded play experiences. This curriculum clearly defines the stages of children's play behaviors and product creation during construction, sensorimotor, and dramatic play experiences allowing adults working with young children to assess and scaffold childrens development. The research and longitudinal follow-up supporting this curriculum has shown that when children successfully master the stages of play they are developmentally guided toward success in reading, writing, and math skills.