Early Childhood Curriculum: A Creative-Play Model

This comprehensive guide provides information on planning programs with a play-based, developmental curriculum for children from birth to five years of age and covers basic principles and current research in early childhood curricula. The text is unique in that it discusses the creative play model for use with children from infancy through preschool by presenting an integrated, individualized curricular approach that helps teachers to be sensitive to and to plan for young children with a variety of developmental and cultural backgrounds.

Carol E. Catron, author and consultant, is former director of the Early Childhood Education Teacher Licensure Program and faculty member in the Department of Child and Family Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She also is former director of the University of Tennessee Child Development Laboratories. She was born and raised in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where she developed a special love and understanding for young children through her relationships with seven nieces and nephews. She graduated from Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, with a bachelor's degree in elementary education. Her master's and doctoral degrees are in early childhood education from George Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. Prior to teaching and directing in university settings, she taught kindergarten in public and private schools, taught preschool in parent cooperative and university laboratory settings, and organized and directed the first preschool program in the Nashville, Tennessee, metropolitan school system. She has taught numerous workshops on storytelling with young children and, with her sister, Barbara Catron Parks, has published three storytelling books: Super Storytelling, Cooking Up a Story, and Celebrate with a Story.

Dr. Catron's areas of expertise are in play therapy, curriculum development, staff development and evaluation, and storytelling with young children. She also is involved in child advocacy efforts through professional organizations and agencies and has served as a mentor and validator for The National Association for the Education of Young Children's Academy of Early Childhood Programs.

Jan Allen is an associate professor in the Department of Child and Family Studies at the University of Tennessee. She was born and raised in Oakdale, Louisiana, graduated from Oakdale High School, and attended Louisiana Tech University. She graduated from Oklahoma Baptist University, Shawnee, Oklahoma, with a bachelor's degree in home economics education. After working in Head Start from 1975 to 1977, she obtained a master's degree from the University of Oklahoma and a doctoral degree from Purdue University in child development.

Dr. Allen has been a faculty member at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, since 1982, teaching undergraduate and graduate classes in child development, early childhood education, and children and stress. She conducts research on early childhood work environments and job satisfaction, licensing and policy issues in child care, children's moral development, and young children's political socialization. She is currently writing a book about the children she taught in Head Start and their lives 25 years later. Her interests in public policy focus on child care, early childhood intervention, and children and stress.

In 1993, Dr. Allen was chosen as one of the first two Chancellor's Teacher-Scholars at UTK; in 1997, she was appointed assistant dean of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Graduate School. With her colleague Sky Huck, she developed and coordinates the university's Graduate Teaching Assistant Mentoring Program: Developing Future Faculty as Teacher-Scholars, an initiative of research, training, and support and recognition for GTAs in their instructional role at a research university. She also directs the University's College of Human Ecology's Child Care Resource and Referral Office, a clearinghouse for research, policy development, parent education, and teacher training for 16 counties in eastern Tennessee.