Curriculum Information

Curriculum Information

The Creative Curriculum

A comprehensive, developmentally appropriate curriculum with specific objectives for children's development and learning. The objectives define what you want children to know and be able to do. The curriculum also tells you how to get there and how to help children achieve the objectives. 

Fundamental Beliefs:

*Creative Curriculum is responsive, individualized education and care based on each individual child. 

*It ensures children's safety and health. 

*Learning environments support and encourage play and exploration. 

*Educators and families support children's development and learning by forming partnerships that respect cultural, family, and individual differences. 

*Children's social-emotional development is a primary goal of the program.

Zoo-phonics® curriculum meets Common Core Standards!

• Teach your students the alphabet in TWO WEEKS! Faster than you ever expected your students will be reading, spelling and writing!

• The Zoo-phonics® Multisensory Language Arts Program is a kinesthetic, multi-modal approach to learning all aspects of language arts, including vocabulary development and articulation, based on phonics and phonemic awareness.

• The principle of Zoo-phonics® maximizes understanding, memory, utilization and transference to all areas of the reading, spelling and writing process in a playful and concrete manner.

• Zoo-phonics® is a method developed to make children strong readers and spellers using a “phono” (hearing), “oral” (speaking), “visual” (seeing), “kinesthetic” (moving), and tactile (touching)—whole brain approach. Students actually learn the sounds of the alphabet and advanced phonemic concepts through an easily understood, concrete method of presentation.

• Zoo-phonics® uses animals drawn in the shapes of the letters for ease in memory. A related body movement is given for each letter. This concrete approach cements the sounds to the shapes of the letters. Lowercase letters and their sounds are taught first (needed 95% of the time in text), capital letters and letter names are taught later.

• Zoo-phonics® also provides a springboard for all other academia such as math, art, music, cooking/nutrition, social studies, science, grooming, physical education and sensory/drama.

• Every aspect of the program has been field-tested and found to be effective. Educational research repeatedly supports the focus of phonics in early reading programs, as well as the educational benefits of pictorial mnemonics and kinesthetic approaches to learning that are unique to Zoo-phonics®.

• Currently Zoo-phonics® is used throughout the United States and internationally as a highly effective language arts program.

Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Early Pre-Kindergarten 

The Early Pre-K Phonological Awareness curriculum is meant for learners in 3- and 4-year-old classrooms, and the Early Learning and Development standards across all states were used to plan the lessons for instruction. While the standards and expectations differ from state to state, the Early Pre-K curriculum will teach 5 phonological awareness skills. The skills of rhyme, initial phoneme isolation, and blending are introduced at the beginning of instruction. Segmenting words and Final Phoneme Isolation are introduced in later weeks of instruction.

5 Phonological Awareness Skills

1. Rhyme repetition, recognition, and production

2. Initial Phoneme Isolation, including listening for a focus sound, alliteration and generating words that begin in a specific sound

3. Blending words, syllables, body-coda, and onset-rime (Note: we do not blend at the phoneme level like we do in the current PreK curriculum)

4. Segmenting into words, syllables, and onset-rime (begins in week 7; we do not segment into phonemes like we do in the current PreK curriculum)

5. Final Phoneme Isolation (introduced in Weeks 24-35)

2 Early Literacy Skills

1. Alphabet Knowledge

2. Language Awareness: Nursery Rhymes and sentences

Learning Without Tears

• Research-backed curriculum designed to be easy to teach and easy to learn

• Developmentally appropriate sequence flows from Pre-K–5

• Explicit instruction combined with guided practice to promote handwriting automaticity

• Multisensory learning engages visual, audio, and kinesthetic learners

• Hands-on tools to build vocabulary, fine motor, and alphabet knowledge prior to writing letters 

• Handwriting student editions foster student success with a clean, simple and intuitive design.

• Online platform connects teachers, students, and families