FLIGHT: Seeing Your Child as a Mighty Learner

How FLIGHT Helps Us See Your Child as a Mighty Learner and Citizen

If you have spent any time on our website or chatting with our team, you have probably heard us mention FLIGHT. Parents sometimes ask, “What exactly is FLIGHT, and what does it look like in my child’s day?”

FLIGHT: Alberta’s Early Learning and Care Framework is the provincial curriculum framework that guides how early childhood educators in Alberta think about children’s learning, care, and play. It is not a checklist of activities. It is a way of seeing each child as a “mighty learner and citizen” and of building programs around real moments from their everyday lives.

At Little Hummingbirds, FLIGHT sits alongside our Montessori inspired approach and helps us weave play, relationships, family culture, and the child’s voice into everything we do.

What Is FLIGHT?

FLIGHT is Alberta’s curriculum framework for children from birth to kindergarten age in licensed early learning and child care settings. It was developed by early childhood experts in partnership with the field to give educators a shared language and set of holistic, play based goals for children’s learning.

Instead of focusing on narrow academic outcomes, FLIGHT looks at the whole child. It asks educators to pay attention to how children are exploring, expressing, problem solving, building relationships, and making sense of their world. The framework talks about children as capable, resourceful, and full of potential, not as empty vessels waiting to be filled.

What Does FLIGHT Look Like In Our Classrooms?

In practice, FLIGHT shapes the questions our educators ask themselves throughout the day. When we see a child carefully pouring water, building a fort with friends, comforting a younger peer, or asking endless “why” questions, FLIGHT reminds us that these are not “extra” moments. They are the curriculum.

The framework highlights broad play based goals and “dispositions to learn” such as being playful, seeking, participating, and persisting. When your child repeats the same block design again and again, FLIGHT helps us see persistence and problem solving. When they invite a new friend into their game, we see participation, empathy, and citizenship.

Educators use documentation, photos, short notes, and learning stories to make these moments visible. This is not just for us. It is also for families, so you can see the rich learning that is happening in what might look like “just play.”

FLIGHT And Our Relationship With Your Family

One of the core ideas in FLIGHT is a “practice of relationships.” It describes early learning programs as communities where children, families, and educators learn with and from each other.

For us, that means your family’s routines, culture, language, and hopes for your child are not an add on. They are part of the curriculum. When you share stories from home, family photos, or traditions that matter to you, you are helping us design experiences that feel familiar and meaningful for your child.

FLIGHT also encourages educators to be co learners and co researchers with children. Instead of always leading from the front, we get curious with them. We follow their questions, extend their ideas, and invite them to help shape what happens next.

How FLIGHT Fits With Montessori At Little Hummingbirds

Our Montessori inspired environment offers hands on materials, independence, and carefully prepared spaces. FLIGHT helps us layer in an Alberta specific lens that honours children’s identities, relationships, and citizenship in their local community.

Montessori gives your child many opportunities to choose work, concentrate deeply, and care for their environment. FLIGHT supports us to notice and interpret those moments using shared language and to connect them to broader goals for your child as a mighty learner and citizen right now, not just in the future.

Together, these approaches help us offer a program that is both structured and flexible, rooted in strong theory but always responsive to the real children in front of us.

If you would like to learn more about FLIGHT, you can visit:

FLIGHT: Alberta’s Early Learning and Care Framework official website: flightframework.ca

AECEA’s summary of FLIGHT for early childhood professionals: Curriculum and Teaching Methods

As always, if you have questions about how FLIGHT shows up in your child’s classroom, we are happy to chat at drop off, pick up, or over email.