The Flight Course Series

Where Flight come to life.

Exploring Early Childhood Curriculum

Curious about how Flight: Alberta’s Early Learning and Care Framework can be implemented in daily practice alongside other educators?
Join the thousands of early childhood educators across Alberta who have taken the Flight Course.

About Flight: Alberta’s Early Learning and Care Framework

Flight is a curriculum framework intended to guide the significant work of early learning and child care educators with young children (ages 0 – before 6 years) and their families in centre-based child care and family day home settings. This is a flexible framework for thinking about how children learn and experience their worlds, as well as a guide that fosters strong early childhood communities.

Children’s play is central to this curriculum framework as an active, exploratory, creative, and expressive process, deeply embedded in children’s everyday experiences and through which children participate in, learn about, and actively make sense of the world.

Introducing The Flight Course Series

The Flight Course Series is an online, non-credit professional learning opportunity for educators and program administrators working in Alberta’s licensed and approved child care programs. The Flight Course Series includes three parts: The Noticing Series, the Naming Series, and the Nurturing Series. Each series explores different concepts within Flight while remaining grounded in the framework as a whole. Throughout the series, you’ll be introduced to core concepts and the holistic play-based goals of Flight, with meaningful opportunities to connect those ideas directly to your everyday work with children.

Is this course for you? Click here for a brief introductory video

Introductory Video

  • “This course has been a positive experience. The readings, the discussion posts, and the writing assignments, as well as the collaborative classes, have rekindled my energy and enthusiasm in regard to planning with a purpose for the children. My co-worker and I have had many discussions about the different topics and we have been making changes to our classroom as we go.”

    Fall 2021 Course Participant

  • “This course has inspired me to be more creative and daring. The word mighty has truly inspired me to be a mighty co-learner, co-researcher and co-imaginer of possibilities myself.”

    Winter 2021 Course Participant

  • “Flight has taught me to slow down and truly listen to children. That all children are mighty learners and citizens, they all have wonderful dispositions to learn. It also gave me the ability to use professional language in my daily practice.”

    Winter 2021 Course Participant

  • “Reflecting and making the meaning of children’s involvement has taught me how we can see the potential children may have as mighty learners and citizens. I learned how I can be a facilitator and an agent for extending children’s exploration and knowledge.”

    Winter 2021 Course Participant

  • “The most significant thing that I learned from this course is to be reflective in my practices, how to do pedagogical documentation processes and apply what Flight is all about in my work and daily experiences.”

    Winter 2021 Course Participant

Course Series:

Noticing

Noticing begins with slowing down and paying close attention to children’s play, words, relationships, and ways of being. In this series, educators practice observing with curiosity and openness, becoming aware of what children are communicating through their actions and interactions. By noticing children’s dispositions to learn in everyday moments, educators strengthen their role as co-learners and deepen their understanding of each child as a capable and mighty learner.

Naming

Naming builds on noticing by supporting educators in reflecting on and interpreting what they see and hear in children’s play. In this series, educators reflect, ask questions, and collaboratively make meaning of children’s play through Flight’s holistic play-based goals. Educators will explore the role of being a co-researcher by naming children’s dispositions to learn, recognizing the value of play, and communicating the importance of children’s lived experiences. Through naming, children’s learning becomes visible to educators, families, and children themselves.

Nurturing

Nurturing builds on noticing and naming by supporting educators in intentionally extending and enriching children’s learning. In this series, educators explore how to make learning visible, strengthen reflective practice, and thoughtfully respond to children’s ideas, questions, and play. Educators engage with Flight’s meaning making tools to guide their decisions and consider how environments, relationships, time, space, and materials nurture children’s dispositions to learn. Educators will explore the role of co-imagining by collaboratively creating responsive experiences that extend play, deepen inquiry, and uncover new possibilities.