Curriculum
Our teaching and learning practices are grounded in Aistear, our national Early Childhood Curriculum Framework. At Little VIPs we carefully design and craft learning experiences which support and enhance your child’s developing interests. This is called an emergent, inquiry-based curriculum. In order to provide this type of stimulating, fun curriculum we…
- prepare the indoor and outdoor environments, so they have lots of open-ended and loose materials,
- carefully observe and listen to our preschool children as they interact with their peers, early years practitioners and resources in preschool,
- have regular communication with parents and carers to help us to build a more complete picture,
- encourage children to represent their interest/inquiry, for example, to build, tell, mark-make, photograph,
- work to deepen children’s level of understanding and support them in finding answers to their questions,
- Support children to reflect on and talk about what they have discovered and
- make children’s learning visible through careful and detailed documentation in each child’s learning journal which is regularly shared with parents and caregivers.
We use the Aistear Síolta Planning tool below to help us develop children’s interests and ideas.
An example of how we work with children in developing an emergent, inquiry-based curriculum has been described by us and published in Mayo County Childcare Committee’s newsletter. Please find archive here.
This type of meaningful curriculum for young children forms the context to enhance their Positive Learning Dispositions. Here at Little VIPs we actively encourage children’s positive learning dispositions through the provision of:
- meaningful and engaging learning experiences,
- positive and supportive interactions and
- rich learning environments both inside and outside.
For more information on helping young children to develop positive learning dispositions please see Aistear’s Tip Sheet