Mostly emergent curriculum is about taking your cues from the kids instead of imposing topics on them so instead of you planning to do a theme of dinosaurs the first week of May you might set out some dinosaurs and if the children show interest then add a dinosaur story or game to circletime and if they don't play with them for two weeks put most of them away - always leave at least one out so they have the option of making dinosaurs a topic of interest. Then bring out the rest of them if child shows interest.

It is also about not staying rigid so if you start on Monday with a theme of dinosaurs but what seems to interest the kids is the volcanoes in the background scene then you shelve your dinosaur lessons and pull out info on volcanoes and how they are formed and find some online videos about an erupting volcano. Eventually they may come back to the dinosaurs but if not that is ok.

No matter what the theme is we are using with young children it is more about what they are learning while doing the theme than the actual theme itself. It isn't important at this stage that your children can name 5 dinosaurs or know all of the stages of the water cycle. The theme is about focusing their thinking so they are matching dinosaurs by colour or sorting them by whether they have horns or long tails or some other attribute. They are learning to be social, take turns and cooperate as you create a mural together.