A relational, curiosity-led framework
Growing Curious Children helps practitioners see children clearly: not statements to tick off, but curiosity to notice, follow and grow. Eight developmental domains, three strands within each, and three phases of growth.
Explore the framework Practitioner resources
What Growing Curious Children is
Growing Curious Children (GCC) is a practitioner-facing framework for the early years, built from nineteen years of practice and research. It grew from a simple shift: moving away from ticking statements off, toward noticing the child in front of you. Development is described across eight domains, each with three strands, and observed through three phases: Seed, Shoot and Flower. The companion text, Seeing Children Clearly, supports practitioners in putting it to work, and is intended to grow into a published book.
What you will find here
The curriculum and assessment framework itself: eight domains, three strands within each, and the Seed, Shoot and Flower phases. The heart of everything.
Explore › Alongside itA growing bank of reading to support practitioners in their work: articles, guidance and tools that put the framework into everyday practice.
Browse › PlannedE-learning and CPD, both on the framework and on early years practice in general, given the GCC way of seeing. Anchored in Seeing Children Clearly.
See what is coming › In developmentThe observation and assessment platform being built around the framework, with a garden view of each child's growth.
See what is coming ›How growth is described
The earliest stirrings. What is beginning to take root: first interest, first attempts, the quiet groundwork that comes before it is visible to everyone.
Growth becomes visible. The child is reaching, practising, repeating, and gaining confidence. Support here is about steady conditions, not forcing.
The capacity is established and expressed with independence. The child draws on it freely, in their own way, across different places and people.
Phases describe how something is growing, not how far behind or ahead a child is. A child can be at Seed in one strand and Flower in another on the same day.
The structure
The signature domain is Curiosity and Independence: the disposition to wonder, explore and direct one's own learning. It sits alongside seven others, together describing the whole child at the point they transition to school.
From the resource bank
Practitioner pieces, reframed from the parent-facing writing at Grounded Parenting, tied back to the domains and phases you observe every day.