Welcome to  Kindergarten and the Kreative Kindies Class!

What an exciting time for students and parents. Kindergarten is the start of an amazing journey. This website is one of the ways that we will be communicating information to parents/guardians, sharing useful information and celebrating the achievements in our class. 

Our team is made up of Ms. Matthews (RCT), Ms. Noble (DECE) and Mrs. Reys (EA). Our contact information is below and we are thrilled to answer any questions you have.

We will be sending home information about in-class volunteering soon. Milk and hot lunch  forms will be coming home as well, so please remember to check your children's backpacks. There will be an additional form with instructions on how to set up your online payment account. This is an incredibly easy and convenient way to pay for food orders and even field trips. 

What to expect this year: For many of our students,this is the first time they have been  away from home all day. It can be stressful and upsetting. It is important that you know that anxiety is a normal part of starting school and a new situation. Please know we will do our very best to make your child feel welcomed and appreciated in our classroom. 

Please provide: All students should have a change of clothes, a pair of shoes for indoor wear only, enough snacks and lunch for two breaks and be dressed for the weather. 

Many of you may be familiar with the inquiry based learning model we follow in kindergarten. However, for those who are not, let me give you a synopsis of how we will be embracing learning this year. 

The essence of inquiry … “Inquiry ... requires more than simply answering questions or getting a right answer. It espouses investigation, exploration, search, quest, research, pursuit, and study. It is enhanced by involvement with a community of learners, each learning from the other in social interaction.” (Kuklthau, Maniotes & Caspari, 2007, p. 2)

What this means, is that:  for students, the process often involves open-ended investigations into a question or a problem, requiring them to engage in evidence-based reasoning and creative problem-solving, as well as “problem finding.” For educators, the process is about being responsive to the students’ learning needs, and most importantly, knowing when and how to introduce students to ideas that will move them forward in their inquiry. Together, educators and students co-author the learning experience, accepting mutual responsibility for planning, assessment for learning and the advancement of individual as well as class-wide understanding of personally meaningful content and ideas (Fielding, 2012). Children naturally love to learn and explore their surroundings, inquiry based learning builds on this innate love and fosters it towards curriculum based content.

Free Explorations, Focused Explorations and Guided Activities are all ways in which we support student learning. In free exploration, students are given new materials or explore materials in a new way while our team  observes, interacts and documents the students'. During focused explorations, students are more familiar with the materials and the teacher is prompting and extending their learning. Through questioning and prompting, we hope to extend the learning of students to a deeper understanding of the content and curriculum. We have placed some helpful and interesting links on our links page to give you more information on this process. There are some short videos as well that very nicely show the inquiry based learning model. 

We spend a large amount of our time outside, so please ensure all students are dressed for the weather and are prepared to be outside. This is a large part of our inquiry process. On this note, we will be going to the Tiffin Centre to learn about how we make maple syrup as well as take part in some fun outdoor activities involving plant identification, "where things go in winter" and how the temperature affects the size and shape of snowflakes. The permission forms will be coming home later this week. 

Again, if you have any questions at all, please feel free to contact us. We are happy to help!