Early Learning and Childcare

– Anglophone sector

The New Brunswick Curriculum Framework for Early Learning and Childcare~English employs a social pedagogical approach to supporting broad based learning goals for preschool children.  This approach recognizes the context of children’s learning and the importance of attending to the todayness of children’s lives and their diverse personal, social, and cultural experiences. A curriculum framework grounded in this approach has the simultaneous effect of promoting over well-being and capacity for learning. 

Learners in Early Learning and Childcare are:

  • Curious, competent, and confident in their pursuit of knowledge and skills.
  • Secure in their linguistic and cultural identities.
  • Respectful of diversity.
  • Contributing to the development of a just and democratic society that nurtures connection and care for life on the earth.

Learners in Early Learning and Childcare need:

  • Inclusive and engaging learning environments that nurture relationships.
  • Opportunities to explore, question, experiment, hypothesize, investigate and play.
  • Exposure to multiple learning communities that honour home languages, the culture and languages of the Mi’kmaq, Wolasteqey, and Peskotomuhkati Nations; the official languages of New Brunswick; as well as visible minority and ethnocultural groups within various communities of learning.

Learners in Early Learning and Childcare experience:

  • WELL-BEING – Safe and caring environments where their emotional and physical health, positive identities, and sense of belonging are nurtured and protected.
  • PLAY AND PLAYFULNESS – Open and flexible environments where playful exploration, problem solving and creativity are encouraged and purposefully planned.
  • COMMUNICATION AND LITERACIES – Intellectually, socially and culturally engaging environments where their communicative practices, languages, literacies, and literate identities are valued and supported.
  • DIVERSITY AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY – Socially inclusive and culturally sensitive environments in which consideration for others, inclusive, equitable, democratic and sustainable practices are enacted, and social responsibility is nurtured.
Early Learning

Goal: WELL-BEING

Facet: EMOTIONAL HEALTH AND POSITIVE IDENTITIES

ASPECT: Children develop a sense of self.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN THE LEARNING: Developing recognition of self; co-construction their identities; experiencing growing self confidence, self respect, and ability to take initiative; growing in their capacity to express feelings, concerns and needs; pursuing interests, passions, and strengths; being curious and questioning.

ASPECT: Children develop a sense of other.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Supporting, encouraging, and listening to others; caring for others; experiencing trust and compassion with children and adults; learning constructive ways to negotiate a range of relationships.

Facet: BELONGING

ASPECT: Children develop a sense of place.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN THE LEARNING: Negotiating new spaces; identifying, creating, and using personal landmarks; becoming familiar with the sights, sounds, rhythms, and routines of new situations; generating a shared repertoire of narratives and memories; making connections between the centre, home, and broader communities.

ASPECT: Children build respectful and responsive relationships.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Developing cherished as well as casual friendships; forming close relationships with a range of adults; growing in their awareness that their actions contribute to the well-being of others; participating in group initiatives.

Facet: PHYSICAL HEALTH

ASPECT: Children take responsibility for personal care.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Growing independence in self-care routines; learning about individual differences in self-care practices; helping others with personal care.

ASPECT: Children learn about food and nutrition.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Understanding the relationship between food and their bodies; building confidence to try new foods; exploring a range of cultural practices of eating and sharing food; making decisions about food consumption, preparation, serving, and clean-up routines.

ASPECT: Children explore body and movement.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Participating in a variety of physical activities indoors and out; learning about their body in space; increasing bodily awareness, control strength, agility, and large muscle coordination; increasing fine motor capacities; knowing and stretching physical limits; releasing and restoring energy in outdoor places.

Goal: PLAY & PLAYFULNESS

Facet: IMAGINATION AND CREATIVITY

ASPECT: Children develop dispositions for flexible and fluid thinking.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Seeing people, places, and things in new ways; expressing unique and imaginative ideas.

ASPECT: Children Invent symbols and develop systems of representation.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Making up their own words, marks, and movements; negotiating the meaning of symbols with others; developing awareness of the imagined and ordinary worlds they move between as they play.

ASPECT: Children create imaginary scenarios in which to explore new possibilities and take possession of their worlds.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Creating social space and shared narratives; creating alternative systems of power; coping with emotional pressure.

Facet: PLAYFUL EXPLORATION AND PROBLEM SOLVING

ASPECT: Children learn about the properties of objects.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Playfully exploring and investigating the properties of objects; experimenting with action and reactions, cause, and effect; creating patterns and relationships – sorting and matching, sizing, and ordering, sequencing, and grouping; developing a vocabulary to describe similarities and differences, patterns, and relationships.

ASPECT: Children test their limits.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Testing their powers of observation and sensory discrimination; testing strength, speed, agility, and control over movement.

ASPECT: Children learn to negotiate the complexities of joint undertakings.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Negotiating rules of time, space, and roles; making collective plans and decisions about the directions of play; developing a sense of fair play.

ASPECT: Children learn to employ creative approaches to identifying and working out practical problems.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Developing sustained, shared thinking; raising questions and making hypotheses about how and why things happen; choosing from a range of materials, tools, and languages to investigate, experiment, and make their thinking visible.

Facet: DIZZY PLAY

ASPECT: Children take pleasure in being on the edge.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Engaging in rough and tumble play; experiencing exhilarating physical release; playing at games of disrupting and restoring order.

ASPECT: Children take pleasure in sharing the joy of laughter.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Making nonsense; clowning and physical humour.

Goal: COMMUNICATIONS & LITERACIES

Facet: COMMUNICATIVE PRACTICES

ASPECT: Children form relationships through communicative practices.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Recognizing and responding to human presence and touch; becoming attuned to rhyme, rhythm, pitch, tone, and vibrations; practicing and playing with sounds; initiating and responding to gestural and visual language.

ASPECT: Children learn conventions of their languages.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Growing in their understanding of languages conventions; growing in their understanding of vocabulary; developing confidence in using languages; growing in their understanding of how others use languages; experiencing and developing diverse linguistic repertoires.

ASPECT: Children extend ideas and take actions using language.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Using language to express thoughts, feelings, and ideas; using language to make friends, share information, argue, persuade, clarify, celebrate, instruct, or tell stories.

Facet: MULTI-MODAL LITERACIES

ASPECT: Children explore a variety of sign systems.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Becoming familiar with the sign systems of language, music, math, art, and drama; engaging in multiple forms of representation; transforming knowledge from one mode to another.

ASPECT: Children engage in multimodal meaning making.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Engaging with the symbols and practices of language (foregrounding the language, tools, and practices of print); engaging with the symbols and practices of music (foregrounding the language, tools, and practices of music); engaging with the symbols and practices of math (foregrounding the language, tools, and practices of math); engaging with the symbols and practices of art (foregrounding the language, tools, and practices of art); engaging with the symbols and practices of drama (foregrounding the language, tools, and practices of drama).

Facet: LITERATE IDENTITIES WITH/IN COMMUNITIES

ASPECT: Children co-construct a range of literate identities.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Creating texts, reflective if family, local, and global literacies; learning various local literacy practices within a range of communities; learning the uniqueness and similarities of their family’s literacies and those of others.

ASPECT: Children engage critically in the literacy practices of popular culture.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Transporting and transforming the literacies of popular culture from home into the centre; exploring various identities and characters embedded in popular culture; growing in their capacity to ask critical questions about stereotypes represented in popular culture.

ASPECT: Children use the literacy tools of digital technologies.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Representing their experiences with technologies in everyday life; accessing and using digital technologies.

Goal: DIVERSITY & SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Facet: INCLUSIVENESS AND EQUITY

ASPECT: Children appreciate their own distinctiveness and that of others.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Learning about their cultural heritages and those of other families in the centre and broader society; becoming knowledgeable and confident in their various identities, including cultural, physical, racial, spiritual, linguistic, gender, social, and economic.

ASPECT: Children engage in practices that respect diversity.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Forming positive, inclusive relationships with all children; learning about differences, including cultural, racial, physical, gender, spiritual, linguistic, social, and economic; learning about and engaging with communities representative of New Brunswick society (First Nations, English and French, Established immigrant families, and new Canadians); learning about, and participating in, projects that help others – locally and globally.

ASPECT: Children raise questions and act to change inequitable practices that exclude or discriminate.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Recognizing and challenging inequitable practices and situations; negotiating equitable solutions to problems that arise from differences, including cultural, racial, spiritual, physical, linguistic, developmental, gender, social, and economic; standing up for themselves and others in a fair manner.

Facet: DEMOCRATIC PRACTICES

ASPECT: Children learn to be responsible and responsive members of the community.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Showing sympathy and empathy for others; giving help, comfort and encouragement, and valuing others’ contributions; respecting the materials, equipment and spaces shared with others.

ASPECT: Children practice democratic decision-making, making choices in matters that affect them.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Beginning to understand their rights and responsibilities, and those of others; voicing their preferences and opinions, and developing an awareness of others’ points of view; questioning, co-constructing, and reworking rules and procedures.

ASPECT: Children practice fairness and social justice.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Voicing and negotiating their understandings of fairness and unfairness; identifying issues and becoming socially active in their local communities.

Facet: SUSTAINABLE FUTURES

ASPECT: Children develop a sense of wonder and appreciation for the natural world.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Bringing all their senses to exploring nature – plants, animals, people, landscapes, weather, and habitat; taking pleasure in natural beauty; connecting to and respecting the natural world.

ASPECT: Children learn to recognize and record patterns and relationships in nature.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Noticing regularity, repetition, and changes in nature; learning to systematically observe, name, and record natural phenomena; raising questions about changes, connections and causes and undertaking first-hand investigations.

ASPECT: Children develop a sense of appreciation for human creativity and innovation.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Bringing all their senses to exploring the constructed world; learning to appreciate beauty, creativity and innovation in art, architecture, and technologies; exploring the mechanical advantage of tools and machinery; designing and evaluating technological solutions.

ASPECT: Children learn about natural resource development and manufacturing.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Making connections between raw materials and finished products; developing an appreciation for the work of others; learning that different approaches to resource development and production have different impacts.

ASPECT: Children learn environmentally and socially responsible practices.

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN LEARNING: Reducing consumption; reusing and recycling; participating in the care of plants and domestic animals, and stewardship of local plant, insect, and animal life; participating in local restoration and regeneration projects.