COE's School of Teaching & Learning - Open & Free Materials: Early Childhood Education

Written specifically for the emerging child psychology student or early childhood educator. Starts with a look at perspectives of early childhood, including how children have been viewed historically as well as cross-culturally. Provides a complete overview of the important theorists that have helped to deepen and bring clarity to how children develop. These theories include psychodynamic, behavioral, social cognitive theory, cognitive theory, humanistic, multiple intelligence, growth mindset, and Bloom’s taxonomy. Then addresses development from the prenatal period through about the age of eight.

• Open License: CC-BY-NC-SA

Serves as an essential guide, exploring the principles, practices, and foundational knowledge of early childhood education.

• Open License: CC-BY

This text focuses on the appropriate use of a variety of assessment and observation strategies to document child development and behavior. Child observations will be conducted and analyzed.

• Open License: CC-BY

The arts find their way in to elementary, middle, and high school classrooms every day in a variety of ways, including Arts as Curriculum, Arts-Enhanced Curriculum, and Arts-Integrated Curriculum. This text explains these approaches and specifically addresses curricular integration of music, visual arts, literary arts, performing arts, and P.E./movement.

• Open License: CC-BY-NC-SA

This book explores a holistic, artistic, and integrated approach to understanding the developmental connections between music and children. This book guides professionals to work through music, harnessing the processes that underlie music learning, and outlining developmentally appropriate methods to understand the role of music in children’s lives through play, games, creativity, and movement. Additionally, the book explores ways of applying music-making to benefit the whole child, i.e., socially, emotionally, physically, cognitively, and linguistically.

• Open License: CC-BY-NC-SA

• Open License: CC-BY

Guided by cultural beliefs and principles, families select experiences, convey attitudes, and impart knowledge to their children to prepare them for adulthood. Accordingly, it is important for program staff to learn to collaborate effectively with families. To develop a partnership and to tap into the family as a primary resource, early childhood educators must reach out to, learn about, and develop strong partnerships with families. This process requires openness to learning and an effort to understand the individuality of each family and the diversity of the families from which the children come.

• Open License: CC-BY

Key discoveries in how young children learn are reviewed in language accessible to parents as well as educators: findings about the interplay of biology and environment, variations in learning among individuals and children from different social and economic groups, and the importance of health, safety, nutrition and interpersonal warmth to early learning. Perhaps most significant, the book documents how very early in life learning really begins. Valuable conclusions and recommendations are presented in the areas of the teacher-child relationship, the organization and content of curriculum, meeting the needs of those children most at risk of school failure, teacher preparation, assessment of teaching and learning, and more.

• Copyright Applies
• PDF free to use; paper book available for a fee

Focuses on developmentally appropriate for preschool-aged children and includes a chapter on infant and toddler curriculum and a chapter on curriculum for school-aged children.

• Open License: CC-BY

Outlines the connection between different areas of language and literacy and describes strategies for supporting development and promoting instruction. Early reading, writing, and language development include pre-writing behaviors, writing attempts, listening, speaking, gestures, and signs.

• Open License: CC-BY-NC-SA
• Read instructor reviews.

• Open License: CC-BY

Addresses growth and development from conception through adolescence.

• Open License: CC-BY

Provides an overview of the developmental lifespan from conception to adolescence using social justice and ecological perspectives. The textbook aims to represent equitable approaches to understanding human development and discusses the diverse factors and interactions that support or hinder development.

• Open License: CC-BY

Examines how to incorporate brain research and create supportive classroom communities for all children. The Community Model for Classroom Management, the approach shared in this textbook, shifts away from compliance-oriented management structures and instead advocates for using tiered systems of support to develop social and emotional skills using a problem-solving approach. Universal, strategic, and intensive supports are discussed and connected to the model. This textbook celebrates the unique strengths that children bring to early childhood spaces and shows how educators can work collaboratively to help all children successfully engage within these communities.

• Open License: CC-BY-NC-ND
• Paper book available for a fee