Colorado’s Early Learning and Development Guidelines

Colorado’s Early Learning and Development Guidelines provide practical tips and points of reference that anyone can use to help kids grow physically, intellectually and emotionally. The Guidelines support children with different cultures, languages and abilities. It has following age-specific domains:

1) For all ages:

  • physical development and health;
  • social & emotional development;
  • language and literacy development;
  • cognitive development;
  • approaches to learning

2) Preschool and pre-kindergarten Ages (3-5):

  • literacy knowledge & skills;
  • logic & reasoning;
  • mathematics knowledge & skills;
  • science knowledge & skills;
  • social studies knowledge & skills;
  • creative arts expression

Our Curriculum

Sunset Academy has selected The Creative Curriculum® by The Teaching Strategies as our main curriculum, which is aligned with the domains of the Colorado Early Learning and Development Guidelines.  The Creative Curriculum® is a comprehensive, scientifically based curriculum for children from birth to six years of age. This nationally known model for best practices provides the teachers with information on the strengths and needs of each of their students, as well as content on instructional practices. Teachers use the Creative Curriculum® for observation, assessment, planning, and implementation of a developmentally appropriate program that promotes children’s social-emotional development and learning in the core areas of literacy, mathematics, science, and social studies.

You can find more information at www.creativecurriculum.net.

Assessment Tool

Children’s progress is assessed throughout the year using the Teaching Strategies GOLD progress mapping system.

Teaching Strategies “GOLD” is an assessment tool used for tracking student progress in the following areas of development: Social-Emotional; Physical; Language; Literacy; Cognitive; Mathematics; Science & Technology; Social Studies; and the Arts. Ongoing observation and GOLD benchmarks are used by the classroom team to select goals and to plan effective instruction for groups as well as for individual students. Goals and activities are based on each student’s needs. Progress is checked three times throughout each program year, and teachers will share progress with parents at parent-teacher conferences. GOLD is part of the Colorado Department of Education Results Matters initiative.

For more information, please visit: www.cde.state.co.us/resultsmatters.