This new resource will help you use The Creative Curriculum? LearningGames to support children?s learning at home with their families. In addition to providing information on communicating and building relationships with families, it guides you in setting up a system for collecting facts about your children through observations and portfolios. You will find advice on selecting LearningGames for individual children based on their growing skills, abilities, and interests; distributing the games to families; and following up with families after they?ve completed the games at home. The guide also discusses ways to introduce The Creative Curriculum? LearningGames to families in workshops, open houses, back-to-school nights, and family conferences. Among the resources provided are handouts that describe child development and strategies families can use to respond to their children?s learning during play.

Joseph Sparling

Joseph Sparling, Ph.D., an early childhood educator and former schoolteacher and principal, is currently an investigator on Partners for Literacy, a national intervention study of Even Start programs. Sparling is the first author of LearningGames, The Abecedarian Curriculum, Partners for Learning, and Conversation Books, educational resources that have been used widely in the USA and abroad. He is a Fellow of the Frank Porter Child Development Institute of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a Research Professor at Georgetown University. In addition to his work in the USA, Dr. Sparling has done curriculum development, training, and intervention in orphanages in Romania.