Newly Updated Curriculum Planning Toolkit now available!

Early childhood is a wonderful opportunity for children to learn and develop from the world that surrounds them. They learn so much through play, exploring and discussion, and the role of the adult is paramount to facilitate both their learning and independence. It is essential that the adult encourages child-led thinking, problem solving, language, imagination and play. A well-crafted curriculum serves to suggest relevant themes and concepts for children to explore, expand on and respond to in the classroom. Designing effective, relevant and interesting curricular activities in the preschool enriches children’s learning environments and facilitates their social, emotional and cognitive development.

Aistear Curriculum Planning

Aistear is the early childhood curriculum framework for all children from birth to six years. The word Aistear is the Irish word for journey and was chosen because early childhood marks the beginning of childrens' lifelong learning journeys. The framework is used as a guide in planning learning experiences. The Curriculum Planning Toolkit provides useful template resources as examples of how one might implement planning templates for early years services. These are obviously not exhaustive and, as a reflective practitioner, it is important to ensure that the planning and assessment tools used by any service fit with the vision and ethos of the learning process in a service. The templates are based on the core principle of Aistear that play is central to the child’s learning.

Updated Curriculum Planning Toolkit

Our brand new updated Curriculum Planning Toolkit serves as a library of ideas, suggestions, samples and templates to aid the planning, implementing, recording and reflecting on curriculum in Preschool. The pack includes a Guide to get you started on how you should approach your curriculum planning for the short, medium and long term within your service. It now includes a Curriculum Statement Sample that encompasses your service’s unique ethos and values as well as a Job Description should your service decide to appoint a Curriculum Officer to provide ongoing support and assistance with the delivery of the curriculum. A check-list style DES Inspection Audit features also to help you prepare, as well as Short, Medium and Long-term planning information, tools, samples and templates.

Special Offer for November

We are delighted to run a special offer for the month of November. Purchase the newly updated Curriculum Planning Pack and you can add our great Video Training: Child-Led Curriculum Planning and Effective Documentation for half price (€10 instead of €20)!

The training is a 40 minute video that can be done at your own leisure and once finished you will complete a short quiz to receive a downloadable completion certificate.

The video has been a firm favourite with services and was devised from feedback that Canavan Byrne received from Early Years Services.  The training video will guide services on following children's interests, understanding an emergent curriculum and successful documentation within an Early Years Setting. It will answer questions such as 'How do I devise an effective and stimulating curriculum in a busy early years’ setting?, 'How do I develop a curriculum inspired by children’s emerging interests?' and 'How do I put theory into practice?'.