Cross of Christ Preschool is a Christian-based learning center. The preschool's curriculum is based on developmentally appropriate practices as described by The National Association for the Education of Young Children. The Creative Curriculum for Preschool (Dodge and Colker) is the curriculum framework used at Cross of Christ Lutheran Preschool.

The curriculum framework has five components including the following:

• How Children Learn - Children learn and develop through relationships with responsive adults, through active, hands-on involvement, through meaningful experiences, and through their continually working to make sense of the world around them.


• What Children Learn - The curriculum instructs teachers how to encourage social, emotional, physical, language, and cognitive growth and development and how to integrate the important areas of literacy, mathematics, science, technology, creative expression and the arts, health and safety, and social studies.


• The Teacher's Role - The teachers' task is to create a caring community of learners, to enhance development and learning, to plan and implement appropriate learning experiences, to assess children's development and learning, and to develop reciprocal relationships with families.


• The Physical Environment - The teachers select and arrange materials to support the curriculum and to encourage the achievement for goals for children. The center areas become a laboratory for children's learning.


• The Family's Role - Parents are encouraged to be actively involved and to be an integral part of the preschool program. They are invited to visit and participate in the program.

The curriculum at Cross of Christ Preschool is a planned management of time, materials and activities to guide children's learning and development. It is an organized framework including content children are to learn and what teachers do to help children achieve the preschool's goals. Curriculum encompasses everything that goes on from when children enter the classroom until they leave including interactions with others, materials and equipment used to implement the curriculum, intentional teaching in both child-initiated experiences and teacher-guided experiences, scheduling providing time for play, creative expression, large-group and small-group activities, and the physical arrangement of the room.

Teachers are engaged in an ongoing process of observing, guiding learning, and assessing children's progress. Teachers use the Developmental Continuum as a guide to make observations and as a tool for planning instruction and assessing learning. They are interacting with children continuously and making decisions about when and how to respond to meet individual and group needs.