One workable way to write Creative Curriculum lesson plans is a week at a time: take the study your class is working through and set the week's activities into the parts of your day — whole group, small group, interest areas and outdoor play.
The form that planning lands on is your program's document, not one our research found from the publisher; this page covers what goes in each part, a filled-in example, and how the daily schedule shapes the week.
The weekly planning form
In a program that plans a week at a time, the weekly planning form is the sheet a Creative Curriculum teacher plans the week on.
The curriculum supplies the substance — the study, the activities, the materials — and the form is where that substance becomes a week for your room: what happens at whole group, what goes on the shelves, what your small groups do, and what it is all aiming at.
The substance has a name and a shape.
Teaching Strategies describes The Creative Curriculum for Preschool as a curriculum for 3- and 4-year-olds, built on play-based studies, with components that include a Curriculum Guide, 9 Teaching Guides and 7 Foundation Volumes.
Those guides are what you plan from; the form is where you commit to a version of the week that your director and co-teachers can read.
One honest limit: our research captured the curriculum's components, not its planning form.
Treat the form as a program-level document.
The version your center hands you is the one that counts, and asking to see a blank copy in an interview is a fair question.
New to the curriculum itself?
The Creative Curriculum guide covers what studies and interest areas are and where GOLD fits — this page assumes them.
Filling it in
Whatever the layout, filling the form in is one job repeated: read the week out of the curriculum and into your room.
A sequence that works:
Name the study and the week
Start from where the class is, not from a blank page: the form records where you are in the study.Block in the fixed parts of the day first
Arrival, meals, rest and outdoor time come straight off your program's schedule. They anchor everything you add.Plan the teaching into the flexible stretches
Decide what whole group introduces, what small group practices, and what you will add to the interest areas so the play carries the study.List materials
Anything to gather, prep or borrow goes on the form. A plan that assumes shopping happens by itself fails by mid-morning.Mark the learning
Note which objectives each activity serves. Where a program runs Teaching Strategies GOLD alongside the curriculum, its research-based objectives — the company cites 38 — give you the vocabulary to write them in.Add the family line
What will families hear about this week, and is anything asked of them? One line is enough to keep families in the loop.Leave room to write what happened
The form is a working document. The notes you make as the week unfolds are next week's starting point.
The objectives step is where planning meets assessment: Teaching Strategies GOLD records what children do against those objectives, so a week planned with them in mind produces documentation you have already half-written.
Plan with your co-teacher
Example
A filled-in form is easier to trust than a description of one.
The sketch below is illustrative — our research did not capture the vendor's own template — but every entry shows what a weekly plan has to answer: what will the children be doing, and what is it for?
| Part of the form | Example entry |
|---|---|
| Study and week | The class's current study, second week |
| Whole group | Introduce the study's new vocabulary at morning circle |
| Small group | A guided activity planned from the study, scaled to where this group is |
| Interest areas | New materials in blocks and dramatic play that connect to the study |
| Outdoor play | A version of the study's question to hunt for outside |
| Materials | What to gather before the week starts, and what to rotate onto the shelves |
| Objectives | The learning each small group targets, in the assessment's words where one runs |
| Families | What families will hear about the week, and anything asked of them |
The tell of a weak entry is vagueness. "Study activities" plans nothing, while "new materials in blocks and dramatic play that connect to the study" can actually be set up.
Read your own form the way a substitute would have to: could someone run Tuesday from what is written?
The blank-grid version of this — a weekly and daily template not tied to one curriculum — is on the preschool lesson plan template page, and the broader skill of turning goals into a week is the how to write preschool lesson plans guide.
Daily schedule
The weekly form only runs if it maps onto the day your room actually keeps.
The form is weekly and the schedule is daily, so the practical move is writing the week's activities into the day's fixed frame block by block — not planning a week in the abstract and hoping it fits.
Where does the frame come from?
Your program.
Our research captured no daily schedule that ships with the curriculum: the rhythm of arrival, meals, rest and outdoor time in your room is set by the center, for the ages it serves and the setting it operates in.
That makes the schedule a question with a concrete answer in one place — the classroom you are hired into.
Ask for it in your first week, and plan onto it.
What a study adds to the frame is emphasis, not structure.
Whole group puts the study in front of the class; the interest areas let children take it further in play; small group lets you watch closely; outdoor time and transitions extend it.
Planned that way, one investigation runs through the whole day instead of living in a single circle.
The frame itself — full-day and half-day shapes, balancing active and quiet stretches, posting a visual schedule for the room — belongs to the preschool daily schedule guide.
When you are ready to look for a room to plan in, the preschool teacher career guide covers the role itself — settings, requirements and pay — and open preschool teacher jobs show what centers near you are asking for.