Animal tracks, snowflakes, outdoor learning, snowmen, and hibernation are interests that children revisit year after year each winter. In an effort to support learning in literacy and music and movement, our team introduces shared poems and songs that we sing with the children each day for one week. We also send a copy home for… Read More Winter Poems on Google Slides
This past year we’ve challenged ourselves to thinking about how kindergarten prep coverage can be responsive to student learning and well-being with considerations like the flow of the day, interests and inquiries, documentation, and the Ontario Kindergarten Curriculum. Our prep teacher coverage was assigned phys-ed for 40 minutes everyday and an extra 40 minutes at… Read More Responsive Prep Teacher in Kindergarten
Our team has previously shared how we document children’s learning with tools like Seesaw and Google Forms. However, the tool we’re sharing in this post is about what we document with regards to noticing and naming the learning. It’s a compilation of “I can” statements in the form of Learning Goals in Kindergarten which correlates to the 2016… Read More Documenting with Learning Goals in Kindergarten
Our early years team saw these amazing no-sew gnomes on Fabric Art DIY and just had to offer these as an invitation for our early learners. We asked families to donate old socks, mittens, buttons, and ribbons. The donations poured in thanks to our supportive families. The process involved children scooping rice into the bottoms… Read More Christmas Gnomes
Apples, pumpkins, Thanksgiving, and Hallowe’en are interests that children revisit year after year each fall. In an effort to support learning in literacy and music and movement, our team introduces shared poems and songs that we sing with the children each day for one week. We also send a copy home for families to reinforce… Read More Fall Poems Shared on Google Drive
Let’s begin with a story. A year 2(senior kindergarten) student enters the outdoor classroom on the first day of school with his mom smiling quietly behind him. His first words are, “Look Mrs Max. I found a worm in my peach pit at breakfast. I wonder why he’s in there?” Some might think, he didn’t… Read More Creating a Culture of Curiosity in Kindergarten
The weather is warming up and the littles are so very excited to get out our portable water wall. The water wall provides amazing opportunity for open-ended exploration and problem-solving using real-life materials. Since Problem-Solving and Innovation play a significant role in Ontario’s new Kindergarten Curriculum as one of the four frames, experiences like a exploring a waterfall provide a… Read More Water Wall: Designing and Documenting
Since the new Ontario Kindergarten Curriculum was released this summer our kindergarten team has spent some quality time reflecting and re-thinking how we document and organize this documentation with regards to the four frames. We’ve narrowed our scope of documentation to 4 main documentation formats and we’re sharing templates for you to use, tweak, improve upon, and share… Read More Documenting with the Four Frames
We believe that building a culture of transparency connects us to our community in a powerful way that demonstrates our commitment to our earliest learners. In our ongoing effort to be transparent our early years team has created a philosophy display for families, visitors, and fellow educators to review. Through newsletters, Seesaw (documentation app), Twitter, Facebook,… Read More Making Our Philosophy of Learning Visible
Social media like Twitter, Facebook, and educator blogs have many educators raving about the front matter in the new 2016 Ontario Kindergarten Curriculum. The response has been a resounding, “yes, we agree”. I’m appreciative of how the ministry has placed a high importance on the whole child, following the lead of the child, and seeing the… Read More A Reflection on the New Kindergarten Curriculum and Flow of the Day (includes timetable and weekly plan)
inspired by play 