Living the early childhood curriculum: five days in family day care settings

Abstract

This ethnographic study provides rich descriptions of the everyday experiences of 11 children in two exemplary family day care settings in urban New Zealand over a 5-day period. The study explored the home-based setting as an early childhood curriculum site. The home-based settings emerged as early childhood settings consisting of multiple sites, which are embedded within the local community. Everyday occurrences, contextually relevant materials or ''tools'' and intense interpersonal relationships were key features. The educator's role in constructing the curriculum emerged as crucial to the children's experiences. Children's experiences emerged as complex, diverse, and embedded within a rich network of relationships that reflected the unique nature of the home-based setting and the "up close and personal" interpersonal connections between the adults and the children in the settings. The insights from the study, about the notion of home-based education and care, provide a starting point from which a home-based pedagogy can begin to be articulated.