St Louise's Early Start

Our Early Start centre caters for 30 children between the ages of 3 and 4. Children must be three years of age upon entering the Early Start Programme on the 1st of September. Early Start is run by a qualified primary school teacher and a child care worker. After completing the Early Start programme, all children are guaranteed a place in Junior Infants.

We have two Early Start groups in our school, with 15 children in each group.

The morning group come to school from 9.10 a.m. until 11.40 a.m.
The afternoon group come to school from 12.10 p.m. until 2.40 p.m.

The main aims of the Early Start Programme are:

to implement an educational programme that will enhance the overall development of young children
that the children will develop confidence in their ability to learn
that the children will develop learning styles, which are led by motivated, organized and appropriately independent behaviour
that the children will develop their language, cognition and social/personal skills to the extent that they will be able to easily adapt to school life in the future
that the “learning through play” approach used in the Programme will be positive and enjoyable for the children involved
that the parents of participating children will become actively involved in their children's education.

Our Early Start class is adopting the recently developed early childhood curriculum framework Aistear, in which the children learn the themes of Well-being, Identity & Belonging, Communicating and Exploring & Thinking.