A Child-First Research Driven Curriculum

Play-based and focused on the individual needs of children

Christ Lutheran Day School has created a curriculum that looks at each child’s individual needs and goals to help scaffold them to their fullest learning potential. The foundation of our program is based on the Creative Curriculum. We use this program as a framework to support the learning environment each teacher creates in the classroom. This includes creating interest areas around the room, and a consistent schedule that meets the needs of the children. The Texas Prekindergarten Guidelines are followed as well.

Teaching Strategies Gold believes that all children deserve a nurturing, engaging, and high-quality learning environment designed to support their unique needs throughout the critical, formative years.

Real-life conflict and challenging situations serve as character education curricula for the Conscious Discipline classroom. Conflict is viewed as a teaching opportunity, and adults are empowered to transform it into a valuable lesson. Character education is part of everyday life,  not an activity that occurs separately.

Conscious Discipline is specifically designed to teach the following:  

  • Anger management  

  • Helpfulness   

  • Assertiveness  

  • Impulse Control  

  • Cooperation  

  • Empathy  

  • Problem-solving


With Learning Without Tears, educators gain simple, effective tools to foster early literacy skills, from readiness to handwriting to phonics, ensuring every child’s path to learning is built on a strong foundation.

The Creative Curriculum builds children’s confidence, creativity, and critical thinking skills through hands-on, project-based investigations. Trusted for decades by early childhood educators, our curriculum:

  • respects and nurtures individual skill progression for the whole child

  • harnesses the power of play through studies that engage learners as young as 2

  • seamlessly connects families to their children’s learning

  • provides intentional support for every teacher every day

Heggerty is a research-based oral language curriculum designed to improve reading and spelling skills through focusing on teaching students to hear and manipulate sounds in spoken language, including rhyming, blending, segmenting, and manipulating phonemes, syllables, and words.

What Is Play-Based Learning?

Play-based learning is an approach in which children learn through play, whether that play is freely chosen, gently supported by a teacher, or structured as a game with a clear objective. By tapping into children’s natural curiosity and their instinct to experiment, explore, problem-solve, and collaborate, teachers create meaningful learning experiences that are both joyful and purposeful.

At the heart of play-based learning is a shift in the teacher’s role. Rather than acting as a “sage on the stage,” delivering information to passive listeners, teachers become a “guide at the side.” They observe, ask thoughtful questions, introduce new vocabulary, and extend ideas, all while honoring children as active thinkers. Children are not empty vessels waiting to be filled. They are explorers who build new understanding on top of what they already know. For example, as children investigate weather patterns through pretend forecasting, they naturally construct meaning around concepts like forecast and low pressure through hands-on discovery.

Research in the science of learning shows that children learn best when experiences are:

  • Active, meaning minds-on rather than simply hands-on

  • Engaging, capturing attention without distraction

  • Meaningful, connected to real ideas and experiences

  • Socially interactive, built through collaboration and conversation

  • Iterative, allowing for trial, feedback, and refinement

Play-based learning naturally incorporates all of these elements, making it a powerful and effective educational approach.

Free Play, Guided Play, and Games

Free play gives children the freedom to explore, create, and express themselves. It nurtures independence, imagination, and intrinsic motivation.

When educators have specific learning goals in mind, guided play and thoughtfully designed games can further deepen outcomes. In guided play, teachers intentionally embed learning within playful experiences while maintaining children’s agency. For example, a pretend weather station can become a rich context for building vocabulary, scientific reasoning, and collaboration without sacrificing joy.

Studies comparing free play and guided play have found that guided play can lead to stronger gains in areas such as vocabulary and spatial skills. By combining child-led exploration with intentional teaching strategies, play-based learning maximizes both engagement and measurable growth.

In short, play-based learning recognizes that children learn best when they are active participants in their own discovery and when skilled educators thoughtfully guide the journey.