To me, a Bank Street graduate, it may mean something very different than the traditional, kindergarten public school teacher.

I am presenting here just one way of planning curriculum that I found works and is very enriching for the children.

Aside from the planning around a theme, unit or topic, I also add into my curriculum other activities and skills that we are working on througout the year.

If you have any questions on it of course feel free to comment below.

1- Master Plan

Under my master plan these are the basic curriculum and skills that I would want covered in a given year.

1. Literacy , reading goals and activities
2. Reading readiness goals and activities
3. Math concepts goals and activities
4. Music goals and activities
5. Sciences goals and activities
6. Holidays and specif concepts need to cover

This is very basic and will differ for various ages.

The next step is to branch out from this master plan that will have lots of papers and notebooks and book on.

2- The Unit

The Unit is the topic you are covering for a particular week, month or unknown time period. In the project approach it would be the topic that you have discovered the children are very interested in.

The point of starting from the child’s point of view is that the children will be more interested in topics that come from them. But the concepts are the same in that everything we want children to learn can branch out from any topic or unit.

We don’t compartmentalize knowledge, by saying now we learn math and now science. We incorporate everything under the banner of this unit and learn through that topic. (Except for specific skills)

A unit can be a holiday, a season, a social studies concept

You should NOT base a unit on something like colors or shapes, those are very limited, are very common in traditional classrooms and shapes and colors can be incorporated into any unit. It’s also not exciting to learn about shapes or colors in a vacuum.

3- List of activities for unit

1. Concepts you want to cover in unit
2. Activities and games for circle time to reinforce concepts
3. Visual aids you may need to help with reinforcement
4. Math concepts to tie in to unit
5. Reading and pre reading activities
6. Art activities and projects
7. Science
8. Trips
9. Centers and changes you will make to them based on unit
10. Music and movement

4 -Other activities not related to the unit

• Outdoor, physical games and activities
• Any math, acience, reading or music activites not tied into unit
• New centers for work period
• Individual children that need working with and on what

5- Putting your plans into a chart

I actually find that I need 2 charts for planning. As most of the day in an early childhood classroom follow mostly the same pattern every day you would need charts for circle time, work period and quiet activity time , as those are the blocks of time that need filling in every day.

Circle time and quiet activity time can go on the same chart with days of the week next to them an what you plan on doing in those times on those days.

The next chart would be the one for work period, which is the bulk of the learning time in a progressive Bank Street like classroom.

The classroom is set up with centers depending on whats going on in the unit is what you would put into those centers to facilitate learning.

Some of the centers you may want to have.  (No need to use all, and eve if so, not at the same time.)

• Blocks
• Art
• Dramatic Play
• Manipulatives
• Science and Math center
• Sand/ water
• Library
• Easel
• Computers

A good progressive classroom is always looking to make changes to various centers in the classroom to enrich the unit the children are working on.

In a further post I will give you a sample curriculum.

Integrated curriculum, in this case integrated preschool and kindergarten curriculum ties all subject matter into a cohesive whole. (imitating life I guess)

There are a few ways that this is done.

If you doing the project approach you would begin by listening to the children as they are playing and follow their interests in choosing the topic or theme.

You would then tie all of the subject matter into the theme that you have chosen from the children’ s interests.

If you are following the Emillio Reggio apporaach, art is what is the connecting force of the whole curriculum.

Bank Street College which espouses the developmental approach to learning does it similarly.

Bank Street school usually begins with a social studies concept. The children will go on a trip as simple as going to the fruit and vegetable market. Sometimes  their beginning trip will be a bit more elaborate, but they use a social studies based curriculum and use which is what is most familiar to children. Local studies.

Based on this trip an entire curriculum is woven around it.

If they are doing a market study, after their trip to the market, they will create their own market in school, incorporating reading,writing, math, the arts etc into their market  by planning and creating it.

Math comes into play as they measure for the size of their stalls, buy the food to sell, tally up purchases and figure out what their profit is.

Science : Ass they discover the various fruits and vegetable, what happens to them, what can be done with them, predictions and observations.

Reading:  Making signs for advertising their market, signs for the market itself, reading other books about markets,  writing about the market.

Of course art ties it all together as they create the stands and the posters for their market and draw and paint about their experiences.

The whole curriculum comes alive as they pull their market together and sell fruits and vegetable to the other children in the school.

This is actually the most exciting and relevant way of learning as it brings learning close to home and extremely relevant for children.

When children learn in the traditional manner, where everything is compartmentalized, their learning is separated from life and does not have as much meaning.

Using real life experiences of the children and tying it to learning makes learning very meaningful, fun, exciting and enriching.

An integrated curriculum can start at many different points, however the basis for it, includes ALL skills and subjects into the theme or unit at hand so that the children can integratete their learning into a  whole.