What is Special about Fullday Kindergarten?
As I briefly wrote in my introduction via your child's zippy, the revised full day kindergarten curriculum places a heightened focus on inquiry learning. This means children shape the topic they want to learn about and educators facilitate meaningful learning opportunities. This is meant to encourage children's natural curiosity while educators ask open-ended questions for child-initiated exploration and discovery. In our classroom, you will find a blend of traditional and inquiry learning models.
Parents often ask how they can support their child's learning at home. When children are in kindergarten the best way to support your child's learning is by spending time with them exploring their world, talking about your findings and asking questions. Some of the tenets of fullday kindergarten are: exploration & investigation, creative thinking, observing and learning.
If you would like to learn more, visit:
Council of Ministers of Education Statement on Play Based Learning
Ontario Ministry of Education
We balance this inquiry approach to learning with some time on fundamental literacy and numeracy skills. With Mrs. Iversen, Room 8 learned the entire alphabet and we have now begun learning about vowels and phonemic blends (like sh-, th-, sp-). In the mornings, we spend some time writing our best sentence using our "Sentence Starters" and Popcorn Words (e.g. like, a, he, and). For some of our SKs, I have made new writing prompts and am looking forward to some new sentences :)
Much of our language skills is developed in centres with games and fun language-based activities. This is also an effective way at tailoring activities with respect to the child's current level. We are also developing our emergent literacy skills through our routine of looking at books and sounding out unfamiliar words after both nutrition breaks.
This is a snapshot of a typical day in Room 8!
