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How to Design Preschool Thematic Units That Actually Teach Something

A “Dinosaurs” week looks wonderful from the doorway. Children are painting fossils, roaring at each other during free play, sorting plastic dinosaurs by size.…

Subject-Based Preschool Curriculum Planning: Building Depth Into the Early Years

A curriculum director spreads two documents across the table. One is a scope-and-sequence grid  Literacy, Numeracy, Science, Social-Emotional Learning, running left to right across…

How to Choose Themes for an Early Years Curriculum (Without Letting the Calendar Decide)

In a toddler programme in a beach town in California, the teachers announced that the week’s theme was deserts. There were cactus cut-outs to…

Four-Point Developmental Scales in Early Years Assessment: Describing Growth, Not Ranking Children

Two teachers watch the same four-year-old sort a tray of buttons. One ticks a 3. The other ticks a 2. Both are experienced and…

Observation Checklists vs Rubrics in Preschool: One Tells You If, the Other Tells You How Well

A four-year-old builds a block tower. It falls. She rebuilds it and it leans. On the third try she widens the base before adding…