Registration for new Kindergarten students occurs in January to February but parents are welcome to register their children at any time of the year.

Please register your child online by going to https://ereg.tldsb.ca/. You will then be contacted directly by your child’s school to complete the registration process.

For those who do not have access to internet, please contact your child’s school directly to register your child.

If you do not know which school you should attend please visit mybustoschool.ca and enter your address.

School phone numbers may be found in the Schools Directory.

To register your child in Kindergarten, please have the following items ready:

• Proof of age for each child.
• Name and phone number for family doctor.
• Ontario Health Card number (optional).
• Child’s immunization record.
• Residence road name and 911 address.

French Immersion programs are offered at the following schools:

Haliburton: Stuart W. Baker Elementary School and J.D. Hodgson Elementary School
Muskoka: Monck Public School and Riverside Public School
City of Kawartha Lakes: Leslie Frost Public School

Although the French Immersion program does not begin until Grade 1, potential French Immersion students may register at their local school for Junior Kindergarten (JK)/Senior Kindergarten (SK) or they may register for JK/SK at the French Immersion school in their area. After March 31, registration of out-of-area JK students at French Immersion schools will only be permitted if space is available.

You are your child’s first educator, and are still the source of much of their learning. We encourage you to communicate with the classroom educators, to offer useful information and to ask relevant questions about your child’s progress. Knowing the expectations – skills and knowledge – of the Kindergarten Program will help you to understand the assessment of your child’s learning. You and the educators will be working together to improve your child’s progress throughout the year.

Note: Reading with your child each day has been proven in research to have an impact on future academic success.

The Kindergarten Program encourages students to experience learning that is developmentally appropriate and offered in many different ways. Educators will take advantage of both indoor and outdoor spaces to engage children in carefully planned lessons, and offer opportunities for them to explore and apply their growing skills in playful ways.

Children will investigate letters, sounds and words as well as numbers and quantities and use that growing knowledge to unlock beginning reading and writing skills and to begin to see themselves as young mathematicians. Stories, songs, dramatic play, creative expression and space to follow curiosity make Kindergarten classrooms an exciting place to learn and grow.

Your child will have the opportunity to work with their educators and peers in whole group and small group settings, as well as one-on-one. Although there are times when children are expected to sit quietly and listen, most of the time Kindergarten classes are filled with sound and activity.

• Choose clothes, jackets, shoes, and boots that are easy to put on, take off, and fasten. Practicing with your child at home so that they can do these skills with increased independence is also very helpful.
• Kindergarten children learn best when they are experimenting, exploring, discovering, and getting messy. Choose clothes that are durable and easy to clean.
• In the course of the day, your child will sit on the floor, jump, run, walk, bounce, stretch, bend, and sit in a chair. Choose clothes and footwear that will be comfortable during all of these activities.
• Outdoor play is an important part of the program. Your child needs outdoor clothing for all types of weather.
  Label everything with your child’s first name and the first letter of last name. (e.g. Jane M.).

The Kindergarten Program is organized into 4 frames:

Belonging and Contributing: which encourages children to build positive self image and to see themselves and others as valuable members of a learning community. This frame helps students learn to add their ideas to the group and accept the ideas of others.

Self-regulation and Well-Being: which supports children in becoming attuned to their own feelings, thinking, and physical and mental wellness as well as those of their peers. This frame helps children build strategies to support them in getting ready to learn.

Problem solving and Innovating: which fosters children’s curiosity and encourages them to question, investigate, create, and test theories as they look closely at the world around them. This frame supports development of these skills in social situations as well as in creative and scientific explorations.

Demonstrating Literacy and Mathematical Behaviours: which provides opportunities for children to explore how letters, sounds, numbers, and other math and literacy concepts work to help them communicate and describe things they experience. This frame supports students in seeing themselves as young readers, writers, communicators and mathematicians.

All of the expectations in the Kindergarten Program are woven through these frames offering your child exciting ways to learn and practice new skills both socially and academically. Your child’s progress and growth in learning will be communicated to you through these frames.

Listening is a complex skill but an important one that leads to deep understanding. Help your child to recognize and practice the steps involved in listening:

• Stop what you are doing.
• Look at the person who is speaking.
• Don’t talk or move around when the person is speaking.
• Think about what the person is saying.
• Repeat what the person has said to be sure that you understand. These listening skills can be modelled and practiced during many different activities at home such as, discussing thoughts on a story you read together, talking about how your child’s day was at school, reflecting on an outing you both had, or problem solving a social situation with a sibling or friend.

Play is your child’s homework! Watch your child at play; your observations will give you insight into how they prefer to learn. All play – in fact, anything your child is doing – can be a learning experience. Here are some ideas to help you make the most of these opportunities:

• Help develop personal and social skills. (Example: praise and label manners, independent behaviour, good problem-solving . . .).
• Provide opportunities for your child to play with others.
• Encourage sharing and taking turns.
  Teach basic safety rules and encourage your child to follow them.
• Encourage self-control and acceptance of responsibility. Additionally, finding natural opportunities to practice counting small collections of items (forks for the dinner table, cookies on a baking sheet, eggs left in the carton, etc.) is a great support for many math concepts throughout the school year. Providing your child with fun materials to practice mark making, the beginnings of printing skills, through different activities (painting, chalk drawing, colouring, scribbling/playing with print, sketching, etc.) is a great way to build hand strength and coordination which will help as they begin to learn about kid writing at school.

Your child’s educators will be continuously assessing your child’s progress and will keep you informed. The most important method is through observation – watching and talking with your child. Your child’s educators will use many strategies to assess your child’s learning such as small tasks, assignments and activities. Each strategy gives the educators another part of the picture about how and what your child is learning.

Each child develops in their own way. Young children go through many stages as they grow and learn. One of the things your child’s educators will be considering as part of the assessment is your child’s stage of development. That’s important information to help the educators plan a learning program suited to your child’s needs.

The Ontario Kindergarten Program consists of overall and specific expectations and key understandings that children should develop over two years. These learning expectations represent the first steps in a continuum of programming from Kindergarten to Grade 8.

More information is available at the Ministry of Education website.

View the online parent/guardian Kindergarten registration package, which includes:

• TLDSB SchoolMessenger information
• Voluntary Self Identification card
• Under 18 student registration form
• Preschool information form
• History of hearing and vision form
• Health Unit Immunization communications/form
• Early Years Programs information sheet