Total Learning: Developmental Curriculum for the Young Child

Total Learning is a practical book based on forty years of teaching young children, their families, and student teachers as well as on the author's experiences with the preprimary schools in Reggio Emilia. The book advocates constructing curriculum based on emerging interests within a practical, flexible, thoughtful, teacher-made plan. Because Total Learning focuses on the developmental needs of children rather than on specific subject areas, it is divided according to the emotional, social, creative, physical, and cognitive selves. Such topics as science, art, and social studies are included, but they are incorporated into discussions about the self they predominantly benefit. The book advocates curriculum that is age-appropriate, nourished by play, and intended to encourage children to become independent, creative, thoughtful people. For teachers and future teachers specializing in Early Childhood Education.

Joanne Hendrick is professor emerita of early childhood education from the University of Oklahoma. In addition to raising four children of her own, her practical experience includes working with children at the Stanford Speech and Hearing Clinic, directing a parent-child workshop, working in Head Start, and chairing the early childhood areas at Santa Barbara City College and the University of Oklahoma. She holds an undergraduate degree from Stanford University in disorders of speech and hearing and graduate degrees from the University of California in counseling and early childhood education. She is past president of the California Association for the Education of Young Children.

Her current interests include gardening, photography, traveling to exotic places, writing about young children, and enjoying her ten grandchildren.