All educational systems around the world use different names, grades, guidelines, and tests. Additionally, many of these are simply wrong, because people progress and develop at different speeds and in different ways.
That’s why we simplified our system to a handful of “levels”.
In the curriculum below, we state the grade or age range that is typically associated with it, based on four countries (USA, UK, AU and NL).
This is, however, not a requirement in any way! Someone age 5 might have the math proficiency of someone age 10, and it would be foolish to keep them locked inside a specific grade (doing the same easy exercises over and over).
As explained in our Philosophy, we don’t actually support this idea of requiring certain topics to be taught at specific ages or in rigid ways. We merely provide this curriculum for people who do believe it’s important and want a blueprint to reference.
All that needs to happen for someone to learn, is to be exposed to a lot of varied challenges. Just provide them with lots of things to do. And when they’ve been doing the same thing for a while now, do something different. If a challenge is too hard now, switch to a different challenge and come back to it later.
It’s not even a requirement to do things in any sensible order. Kids will figure things out. And if they don’t, no harm done, now you have more data about what challenges they can handle. Yes, this can get messy. That’s good. Life is messy. Learning is messy.
Our brains create new connections and memories through association, which requires messiness. Without creating mess first, there is not even a definition of order that a brain can slowly figure out.
Sticking to a rigid curriculum has even more downsides, such as being outdated easily. Notice, for example, how most curriculae around the world still don’t include digital skills / informatics. Even though 90+% of our lives is digital now, and some babies touch a tablet before they touch another toy. Instead, if you simply use the entire world as your playground and learn from it as you go, you can never be outdated.
That said, the curriculum below is a compilation of world-wide curriculae and laws on education. We’ve been maintaining the list ever since we became interested in improving the systems of education. The hardest part has been to keep it streamlined and summarized, without missing anything important, and accounting for major gaps/differences between certain views on education.
Use it as a guide when you’re not sure what to focus on or whether to try a new topic. Use it as your waypoint from which you explore the resources on this website.
Until age 2 or 3, our philosophy (“just do lots of stuff every day, and you will learn”) is taken to the extreme. Babies and toddlers should just experience as much as possible, exercise as much as possible, just explore and move around.
More specific challenges or exercises should only arrive when the kid typically goes to school, especially if this means being required to sit down or sit still for longer periods of time.
The big thing here is discrimination (which is just an advanced version of recognition). The very first step to understanding anything, is learning to recognize that A is (not) the same as B. Anything else around this age will naturally follow from that. Conversely, if someone can’t discriminate yet, then further challenges are entirely useless.
As such, when covering these topics, focus on “are they recognizing things (as different/the same)”. Don’t focus on any more superficial test like “when I show the same picture of an A, do they make the AAA sound?”
Remember why we do this: to help children learn new skills and grow. The question should always be “how can I help them learn?” instead of “how can I force them to do what school wants them to do?” Always ask why. And remember the correct why.
Recognize and discriminate sounds, First Vocabulary, Challenges like rhyming or naming first/last word in a short sentence, Word Awareness -> Syllable Awareness -> Phonics, Listen to and repeat stories
Recognition & Discrimination -> Comparison (smaller/larger, brighter/darker, etc) -> Sorting/Contrast/Grouping (without counting), First Shapes, First Colors, First introduction to patterns and “logic” in life (such as seasons)
Learning “how to learn” and what school is, Teamwork & Collaboration (Taking Turns), Habits and routine (such as “brush your teeth every day”), Dealing with common social situations, Creativity & Association (Trying something new)
Gross Motor Skills (any sport/exercise/physical game) -> Fine Motor Skills (cutting, folding, throwing, crumpling paper) -> Pencil Control, My First Directions (words and concepts for indicating movement and direction in a physical world).
Anything that challenges gross and fine motor skills. Activities where you give answers by moving around, games where it’s all about physically doing stuff, are included too. The need to be physically active is true for everyone, though, for their entire life. So it won’t be mentioned again.
This level basically lays the foundations for all major skills. Any material here has to be very intuitive, practical, and gamified because you can’t expect someone to be able to read/write well.
By the end of this stage, the foundations should be done. Kids know the entire alphabet and all its sounds. They know all the numbers and the general things you do with them. It’s usually too early, though, for applying those foundations to more advanced challenges. (There’s a difference between knowing every letter of the alphabet, and being able to spell every possible word with that.)
Personally, and perhaps controversially, I’d focus a lot on the “World” aspect. That’s the actual important and practical thing. By focusing on news stories, or some landmark near your house, or a change of seasons that kids can experience, lessons become much more practical and immediate. First you experience the world, and then you learn to put it into words and numbers, not the other way around. First someone sees a cat—and learns about them, takes an interest, thinks positive thoughts like “ooh cute fluffy beings”—and then they’re eager to learn how you write the name for that animal.
This also combats the issue of “rote memorization”. The real world throws endless different challenges and questions your way, forcing you to understand the deeper knowledge behind something. Homework exercises, however, can only be a fixed set of questions that a kid can just … memorize.
This level mostly means children are starting to write and read more, and more, and more.
In doing so, the crucial part is to vocalize. We evolved to speak, written language only came much later, which means teaching language becomes far more effective when people sound out words and read everythig aloud.
Also notice the “More Vocabulary” tacked onto every level. This usually means growing vocabulary by about 1,000 words, but it’s obviously not measured as strictly as that. More importantly, we distinguish between active vocabulary (words someone would use themselves) and passive vocabulary (words they’d understand if they appeared).
Just as this level solidifies the language basics, it does the same for a maths basics. Children can handle large enough numbers now, and start to see multiplication and division, which makes many other mathematical or logical puzzles possible.
@TODO: Add link to first Teaching Resource once available
@TODO: Add link to first Teaching Resource once available
@TODO: Add link to first Teaching Resource once available
@TODO: Add link to first Teaching Resource once available
This is a bit of a middle ground where most people find it hard to see concrete “progress”. Something we call the “muddy middle” as writers, because you’re far from the start but also far from the finish. Nevertheless, learning surely goes on and contains many important steps. I guess the most important task here is to keep doing things and keep spirits high.
Explore all resources in this level!
@TODO: Add link to first Teaching Resource once available
@TODO: Add link to first Teaching Resource once available
@TODO: Add link to first Teaching Resource once available
This level usually marks the switch from your first school to your second (primary->high). This usually involves a big final test, and lots of time is wasted preparing for this big final test. At least in the Netherlands, they literally teach you “tricks” for months on how to get the best possible score, instead of, you know, teaching valuable skills ;) I do agree, however, with curriculae that say you should prepare your child for this major switch and make sure to properly orient on where they want to go next.
Explore all resources in this level!
@TODO: Add link to first Teaching Resource once available
@TODO: Add link to first Teaching Resource once available
@TODO: Add link to first Teaching Resource once available
At this point, the topics and guidelines of education branch out. There are many different types of high schools, which offer many different subjects (some required, some optional), which means it’s hard to pin down specific topics for the final levels. In the Netherlands alone, there are topics that were covered to death on my school, which I learned other people never even heard about (when I went to university and met people from all over the country).
It is my view that, once you have sufficient skill in language and math, you can learn anything. You only need to be able to read and think critically to achieve anything. All topics offered from this point onward are completely optional, can be explored in any order, and have no “one true path” through them.
One might notice that we basically compressed the entirety of high school into one level. This has to do with my statement at the previous level: once you can read a little and count a little, the world has opened up. You can do anything, learn anything, and you don’t need to wait on adults or school to hand you that. Go follow any interest, go problem solve, you can do it!
Moreover, you are now old and experienced enough to organize and play more advanced things (like quiz nights, escape rooms, or full board games) by yourself. In a way, level 6 is just “the final level” that extends from age ~13 until the day you die.
The guidelines below are therefore sorted, instead, by their individual subject and the foundational ideas inside to get people started.
@TODO: Add link to first Teaching Resource once available
@TODO: Add link to first Teaching Resource once available