What Creative Curriculum Training Videos Actually Are
They are structured instructional materials produced by Teaching Strategies to help early childhood educators implement the Creative Curriculum for Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers. The training videos walk you through curriculum components, observation methods, environment setup, and lesson planning. They are not a replacement for on-the-job mentoring, but they serve as a consistent reference point when you have questions between coaching visits. You access them through the Teaching Strategies Gold platform. If your program already subscribes to Gold, the training section lives under the Resources tab, specifically the Professional Development area. You log in with your program credentials, click Professional Development, and you will see modules organized by age group. The videos are downloadable for offline use, which matters because your center's Wi-Fi does not always cooperate during in-service days. If you do not have Gold access, you can purchase a subscription directly from the Teaching Strategies website. Individual training bundles are also available for purchase if your center only needs specific modules rather than a full subscription. Prices vary, but expect the standalone training packages to run in the $150 to $400 range depending on how many age groups you need coverage for.
How the Training Videos Are Organized
Each age group gets its own track. The preschool track runs longer than the infant or toddler tracks because of the expanded content around developmental domains, learning experiences, and assessment integration. Typical module lengths run between 20 and 45 minutes. The content breaks into categories like curriculum framework overview, environment design, interactive journal use, and observing children with the Objectives of Development and Learning. The videos are straightforward. They are not cinematic productions. They feature presenters talking to camera, some screen recordings of the Gold interface, and occasional clips from model classroom settings. That format is intentional. The goal is clarity, not engagement theater. You will learn more from a presenter walking through a completed interactive journal page than from any slickly edited animation.
What the Training Covers and What It Does Not
The videos cover the foundational structure: the ten developmental areas, the focus goals within each area, how to set up learning centers, how to use the observation and documentation tools, and how to write individualized goals. They also walk through the Goal Attainment Scale and how it connects to family reporting. They do not cover what happens when your center is under staffing ratios, your budget does not allow for adequate materials, or your team resists documentation. I learned that the hard way. One center I worked with had excellent management buy-in but their lead teachers were so overwhelmed with check-in procedures and compliance paperwork that they simply stopped updating their observations in Gold. The training videos assumed regular weekly use. They did not address the reality that some classrooms lose three to four hours per week to non-curriculum tasks. My workaround was to run a condensed parallel session with just two teachers who were willing to adopt the system first, then let their success create peer pressure for the others. It took six months before the rest of the team started participating. Not ideal, but it worked.
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Practical Issues You Will Encounter
Video playback quality varies depending on your internet connection and browser. Safari tends to lag more than Chrome when streaming from the Gold platform. If you are downloading for offline viewing, make sure you have at least 2 GB of free storage on your device. The video files are larger than most people expect, especially when you download the full preschool track. I once tried watching everything on an iPad during a layup day and hit the storage limit halfway through. Had to delete photos to continue. The platform also ties progress tracking to your individual login. If multiple staff members share one account to save money, the system registers one person's completion progress. That means when licensing staff audit your professional development records, you might show 100 percent completion while only half your team actually watched anything. This is a common problem in small centers trying to stay compliant on a tight budget.
Advanced Nuances Beginners Miss
One counter-intuitive thing about these training videos is that watching them linearly from start to finish is usually the wrong approach. Most educators do not need to watch every minute of every module before they start using the curriculum. The better strategy is to watch the framework overview videos first, then jump into the modules relevant to whatever you are working on that week. If you are setting up your block center next Tuesday, watch the environment design segment for that specific area. Save the assessment modules for when you are actually preparing to document observations. Another nuance is that the videos reference the printed Creative Curriculum manual extensively. The manual is a separate purchase. If you watch a video that says refer to page 142 and you do not have the book open, you will lose the thread. I keep mine on my desk while I watch. The cross-referencing is dense, especially in the toddler track where the objectives shift quickly across age bands. There is also a subtle limitation in how the training presents differentiation. The videos demonstrate differentiation through example scenarios, but they rarely show what differentiation looks like in a crowded classroom with limited materials. If you have twelve children and three trucks, the video's suggestion to create a transportation math center does not solve your actual problem. The training assumes resource availability that many centers do not have. In those cases, the curriculum framework itself provides the flexibility. The objects of development and learning are broad enough to work with whatever materials you can realistically acquire. You do not need to buy every suggested item.
Time Estimates for Completing the Training
If you watch everything in one sitting, the full preschool track runs approximately eight to ten hours. The infant and toddler tracks combined are closer to four to five hours. Most educators finish the material in about three weeks when they dedicate thirty to forty-five minutes per day. Centers that require completion for licensing typically give staff six to eight weeks, which is reasonable if you integrate viewing into your existing professional development time rather than trying to cram it all at once. If your center is implementing a completely different early childhood framework like Reggio Emilia, Montessori, or HighScope, the Creative Curriculum training videos will not translate well. The terminology, the observation tools, and the documentation systems are all specific to the Creative Curriculum ecosystem. You would be better served investing in training materials designed for your actual framework rather than forcing a mismatch. Similarly, if you need training on behavior guidance strategies beyond the curriculum's built-in approach, or if you are looking for special education integration modules, the standard Creative Curriculum Training Videos do not cover those topics in depth. Teaching Strategies does offer supplemental modules on those subjects, but they are sold separately and require their own subscription tier.
The videos themselves are locked to the Gold platform and cannot be redistributed, embedded on external websites, or used in staff meetings without a valid institutional license. Attempting to share login credentials across multiple centers violates the terms of service and puts your program at risk of audit issues. That has happened to at least one center I know, and the corrective action required was expensive and time-consuming.
