Your questions answered by Education Correspondent Kathryn Holmquist.

I have two children in primary school and all I really know about the curriculum is that there's a new one and that it's very different than in "our day". Where can I get more information so that I can best support my child's learning?

Supporting the work of the classroom at home goes way beyond homework, so you're asking an excellent question.

"Parents are the child's primary educators, and the life of the home is the most potent factor in his or her development during the primary school years", say the experts who created the new curriculum, The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA). To make sense of it, help is at hand with The Essential Parents' Guide to the Primary School Years by Brian Gilsenan (Primary ABC, €15.99). It explains the new curriculum with detailed descriptions of the 11 subjects your child will be taught, from junior infants through to sixth class, and gives practical suggestions of how parents can reinforce classroom learning at home.

Every morning, we struggle to find everything we need for school: the shoes, the uniforms, the lunchboxes. We can never remember who has gym and who doesn't, and sometimes the children forget to bring the things they need for after-school activities. It's chaotic, and no matter how much I tell the children to keep all their things in one place, no one listens.

I recently heard of a mother who was so fed up with her child not getting dressed in the mornings that she delivered the child to school in her pyjamas, with her uniform in a bag. "OK, you try it," the mother said to the teacher.

Routine is part of the answer. Here is one solution: every child in the house has a large box with his or her name on it in which everything related to school is kept - including underwear, shoes and socks.

The box also has a schedule on it - Monday: gym; Tuesday: piano, etc.

Ideally, these boxes should be kept near the laundry area to minimise running up and down the stairs with clean and dirty clothes. When the children come home from school and change into their home clothes, this is where they put their uniforms, book bags, shoes (keep a shoebox within the larger box for this), etc. It doesn't matter if the uniforms are dirty, the parent can look through the box, wash items, and return them to the boxes.

When stray items appear around the house, put them into the boxes. At the end of the week, everyone who has managed to be well organised and get to school on time should get a special treat.

Soon, the system will become habit.