Early Education for Sustainable Citizenship Curriculum Checklists:
The nature of early childhood learning and development demand that early childhood education is ‘play based’, ‘child centred’ and personalised. A wide range of popular early learning models, including Reggio Emelia, Montessori, Froebel, High Scope, SchemaPlay, the Modern Education Movement (MEM) and Play Responsive Teaching, all provide practical support for preschools in implementing this approach. At their best, and in their different ways ,they each provide support for early educators concerned to support the child in their free-flow play while provocatively extending and seeding this play through the introduction of new resources, adult modelling, ideas or actions. The early childhood curriculum is an ongoing co-construction involving parents and the local community. A Path made in the Walking (Hindmarch and Boyd Eds., 2021) provides a useful (and free to download) introduction to such practice in the context of Forest School Education.
Activities that have been planned to extend and support the learning of an individual or a small group of children often provide important learning opportunities for the wider peer group of ‘vicarious learners’ in the preschool setting. In the context of learning language and literacy, we know that future learning outcomes are largely determined at an early age by the quality of the language and literacy environment that the child experiences in the home and preschool. This applies equally to education for sustainable development and Parent Partnerships and preschool support in developing the Home Learning Environment is considered crucial. Children adopt the habits and behaviours of the adults that they grow up with, and it will always be our adult modelling of sustainable behaviours that are the most influential. The crucial role that parent’s and the wider community play in early learning and development provides a guiding pathway for education and schooling more generally. Our general approach to climate change education must therefore be multi-generational. As the African aphorism has it; ‘It Takes A Village to Raise a Child’.
Below you will find a link to download a checklist that is offered as a first step towards developing your preschool curriculum development plans. The checklist identifies the learning foundations for the Age 5+ provisions of the UNESCO (2024) Greening Curriculum provisions. As a diagnostic tool it may be applied to identify priority areas for your curriculum development. GECCO, in association with OMEP, also provides aligned support, training and accreditation for the development for these areas of the curriculum through their Early Childhood Education for Sustainable Citizenship Award scheme. The OMEP ESC Award is aligned with the UNESCO (2024) Green School Quality Standard, it provides materials to support learning in the home and outside the preschool environment, and it includes progressively applied Curriculum Audits to structure the development of the preschool curriculum, for governance, facilities and operations, teaching and learning, and community engagement at Bronze, Silver and Gold levels.
See also online:
https://gecco.org.uk/omep/
OMEP support is available in over 60 Countries. Contact your local Committee here: https://omepworld.org/about-us-3/