Lesotho’s Early Childhood Care and Development Curriculum Guide

iACT has contracted by UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office to support the Kingdom of Lesotho in updating and finalizing their national Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) Curriculum Guide. iACT lead a team of specialists that focused on integrating emerging areas in child development with an emphasis on play-based learning. Utilizing the feedback and recommendations from Lesotho’s multi-sector ECCD Technical Working Group members, iACT led the process to finalize the curriculum guide including identifying culturally-specific curriculum values, learning themes and concepts, child and teacher/caregiver roles within six learning themes and their respective learning concepts, and an approach to a professional learning cycle to support learning through play.
The guide was designed to meet the social, emotional, cognitive, language and communication, and spiritual needs of children between birth and 5 years of age, using a play-based pedagogical practice to guide educators, teachers, staff and families in enhancing the lives of Lesotho’s youngest citizens. It is the hope of the Lesotho technical working group, that is curriculum guide will inspire a learning-through-play approach in other national curriculums.

The primary iACT team includes Executive Director Katie-Jay Scott, Dr. Aurelia Di Santo, Christa Leeder, Bethany Robichaud, Divya Arora, and Wa’ad Adam. Kellie Dougal, Felicia Lee and Amy Gilmore provided editing support. This curriculum guide layout was designed by Alkarim Bhalesha and Bethany Robichaud. A special thank-you to Dr. Charlene Ryan for her creative contributions and to Gillian Rossi for contributing curriculum ideas.