The Kindergarten Program

Kindergarten at Waterloo Catholic District School Board is a faith-based two year program where children learn through play, exploration and inquiry.

Your child will benefit from having two educators in most classrooms, a teacher and an early childhood educator.

Learning and growing in kindergarten focuses on the following key areas:

• Fostering a  sense of genuine belonging for your child 
• Ensuring they feel their contributions matter
• Developing self-regulation skills
• Supporting well-being
• Developing literacy and math skills
• Supporting problem solving
• Exploring innovation
• Religion & Faith

For more information about full-day kindergarten and tips to support your child’s learning at home, read our parent guides:

• Overview of Full-Day Kindergarten (PDF, 386 KB)
• Play-Based Learning in Full-Day Kindergarten (PDF, 306 KB)
• Literacy and Mathematics in Full-Day Kindergarten (PDF, 357 KB)

Click here for our program expectations:  The Kindergarten Program, 2016 

Click here for our new Religion expectations:  Religious Education for Kindergarten

What Might Learning Look Like In Our Kindergarten Classrooms?

Exploration and Investigation:

Several children design small boats and then bring them over to the water centre. Each child puts his or her boat in the water and then places one shell at a time in the boat. Another child helps keep track of the number of shells using a simple tally. The teacher or early childhood educator asks the children to find out which boat held the most shells before sinking and think about how it is different from the other boats.

Creative Thinking:

A small group of children make several attempts to build a tower as tall as the tallest child among them. Through trial and error, they discover that if they make the bottom of the tower wider they can build it taller. They draw a picture of the finished product and label the pictures to show their solution.

Observing and Learning:

After making bird feeders from recycled materials, the children fill them with seeds and place them in the tree outside their classroom window. They watch the activity that takes place at each of the feeders and record what they see. With support from the teacher and early childhood educator, and based on their own observations, some of the children change their feeders and place them back outside to see if the birds will eat more seeds or land more easily.

Getting Ready For Kindergarten