Published in 2009, Aistear, the Early Childhood Curriculum Framework in Ireland, which covers the period from birth to six years, signifies early childhood as the beginning of children’s lifelong learning journey. Aistear, the Irish word for journey, is underpinned by a nurturing F-relational and playful pedagogy. While child-centered, the primary school curriculum, is prescriptive and subject laden. Although Aistear held great promise with regards to complementing and extending the primary school curriculum at infant class level, and maintaining continuity of learning between early childhood and primary school, it had minimal impact on infant pedagogy in the primary school context, or on the Early Childhood Education and Care profession as a whole. Following repeated calls to align the primary school curriculum for infant classes more closely with Aistear, the Department of Education published a primary school curriculum framework in 2023. This framework represents a paradigm shift from a prescriptive subject-based infant curriculum to a curriculum premised upon playful pedagogy and relationships. For the first time, a pedagogy of play is aligned across Aistear and the primary school infant curriculum. This is an exciting time for children, early childhood educators, and primary school teachers in Ireland, who are on the cusp of a new era of play-based learning across the early childhood-primary school continuum. To ensure a consistent progressive approach across early childhood and primary school, this chapter indicates that shared understanding of play, playfulness and play-based methodologies amongst the educational stakeholders are essential.