Kindergarten

Registration for new Kindergarten students typically takes place at the beginning of January, but parents/guardians are welcome to register their children at any time of the year.

Please register your child online. 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.

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.

For the most part, play is your child’s homework! But in some instances, and with your support, educators may send home fun activities or games that provide practice or reinforcement of newly learned skills. 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.

The main learning and assessment of your child’s French language skills will happen at school with their teacher. It is not expected that you support French learning directly. In the early grades, students will not have a lot of homework. In those years, celebrating their language skills by listening to them read is a great way to encourage your child in their French language learning. Another great way to support your child is to give them opportunities to listen to French in fun and authentic ways (games, shows/movies – see sites below). As homework time and projects increase over the years, students will be working at their language ability level. Parents can support routines, work habits and maintain communication with the teacher(s).

Please see the two following websites: Radio Canada Jeunesse and TFO.