Our Services
The Village Childcare Centre offer 2 pre-school services to our families.
- Our Play school caters for children from the age of 2 to the school-age of 4 or 5yrs. Our Play School opening hours are 8.30AM to 1PM.
- We offer discounted rates through NCS.
- The Government’s ECCE Scheme. Our ECCE hours are from 8.30AM to 1.15PM
- All of our early years educators are supported by in-house mentoring and continued training and assessment of their work, to ensure the best outcomes for your child.
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A typical day at the Village Childcare & Community Services
Our Curriculum
At the Village Childcare Centre we follow the Aistear Curriculum Framework, an educational framework for children from birth to 6 years.
Aistear provides information to assist practitioners, including infant teachers and Early Start teachers, in planning and providing enjoyable and appropriately challenging learning experiences that afford children the opportunity to grow and develop as competent and confident learners within loving relationships with others.
We also follow the Siolta guidelines which define, measure, and support quality improvement in all aspects of practice in early childhood care and education (ECCE) settings for children aged birth to six years. For more information please see the links below.
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Our curriculum is emergent and inquiry based. We believe that our children learn and grow by expanding their own interests.
We emphasis the outdoors, and weather permitting to spend most of our time outside in our new refurbished outdoor are which we continue to develop. The natural world is the best learning environment for young children, allowing them to explore, experience, and make sense of it.
What is an emergent and inquiry-based curriculum?
Aistear and Síolta advocate the development of an emergent and inquiry-based curriculum. This type of curriculum is called emergent because it evolves as choices and connections are made by the children as they discover the world around them.
There is an emphasis on child-led learning. The practitioner shares control with the children; and their actions, thoughts, play, ideas, and conversations guide the curriculum.
This type of curriculum uses children’s and practitioners’ interests, questions and experiences as starting points for curriculum planning. At times, topics emerge from children’s interests.
At other times, practitioners introduce specific topics to support children’s learning and development linked to Aistear’s themes. In partnership with children, practitioners identify ideas or inquiries that become the focus for learning.
Children’s engagement with people, materials, ideas and events triggers their curiosity and motivation to learn. Observant, skilled and supportive practitioners harness child-initiated interest and inquiry.
They also know when it is appropriate and helpful to provide new opportunities and topics for children to explore or when to use adult interests as a stimulus for learning to create a relevant, meaningful and stimulating curriculum for all children.
Children can only be interested in what they have already experienced and this could be limiting. The observant practitioner builds on children’s interests, as well as using their own knowledge to introduce potential interests to the children to see if this sparks their curiosity. The focus is on where the interest leads rather than its source.
For more read Emergent & Inquiry Based Curriculum