Noting that a creative approach to early childhood education allows teachers to reinforce the foundation of achievement by encouraging and expanding upon children's play activities, this book provides teacher-developed ideas and strategies for creating learning communities in the early childhood classroom. The beginning chapter introduces creative teaching within a context of multicultural education, multiple intelligences, teacher accountability, attention to individual differences in children, and parent-teacher communication. The remainder of the book is organized according to six life themes: (1) "Our Fantastic Bodies/Our Amazing Senses"; (2) "Our Feelings"; (3) "Our Uniqueness"; (4) "Our Families/Our Friends"; (5) "Others We Meet/Our Worlds Widen"; and (6) "Our Natural World/Our Environment." Each theme chapter includes a brief discussion of the theme, concepts or points of interest to compel students, suggested vocabulary, suggestions for language-based activities, music and movement activities, art activities, mathematics activities, field trips and visitors, and concludes with a discussion of how the ideas in the theme can be integrated. Appended are lists of field trip and classroom visitor ideas, suggestions for starting to teach creatively, resources and professional organizations, music makers, children's books and additional resource materials, and books for adults. Each chapter contains notes. (KB)