Description:
The Complementary Curriculum Approach provides four powerful and strategic intentions to cultivate rich classroom environments for learning. These tools will help teachers trade 'harried and chaotic' for 'settled and engaged.'
Review Quotes:
"Drawing on the wisdom of pioneers in early childhood education and development, they take that wisdom and use it as ingredients to produce the feast in the classroom they call a 'complementary curriculum', all to 'Create the beautiful spaces, offer the energizing choices, and seize the opportunities for playful learning that brought you into the field.' - their words that define their own beautiful mission."
- W. George Scarlett, Ph.D., Sr. Lecturer and Tisch Sr. Fellow, Tufts University
"The Complementary Curriculum Approach takes educational theories and practices that have strong foundations and uses a fresh look to bring them together to better meet the social-emotional and cognitive needs of all children by providing them with agency and choice."
- Debbie LeeKeenan, Lecturer, author, consultant, AntibiasLeadersECE.com
"The Complementary Curriculum Approach shows us how to balance the best methodologies and integrate curriculum to truly create high-quality early childhood experiences like never before. This is a foundational text that needs to be on every educator's bookshelf alongside the The Hundred Languages of Children, The Absorbent Mind, Mind and Society and Democracy and Education. Kuh and Chin Ponte serve to synthesize the history and future of education for our times just as Montessori, Vygotsky, Dewey and Malaguzzi did for theirs."
- Cady Audette and Kelly Pellagrini, co-directors at Charlestown Nursery School
"Dripping with evocative stories from early childhood classrooms, Iris and Lisa draw on their history as educators and coaches to respond to the everyday frustrations teachers experience as they seek to create a 'settled classroom' in which children's engagement and joy abounds. In this book, the authors show us how key theories and approaches in our field can complement each other to reveal powerful and practical solutions driven by clear intentions, rather than desperation."
- John Nimmo EdD, Associate Professor / Co-Coordinator, Early Childhood Education Programs Department of Curriculum & Instruction, Portland State University