Areas of Learning
Children entering Kindergarten bring with them the capacity to wonder and imagine, and the ability to discover and experiment as a means to finding answers. When children are able to explore the world around them with their natural curiosity, they are fully engaged and see themselves as contributing members of their world.
Learning Through Inquiry: Children engage in inquiry-based learning by exploring and investigating to see how things work and why things happen. Inquiry-based learning engages students in the process of asking questions, wondering and fostering their curiosities.
Learning About the World Around Them: Young children learn best when they can connect their learning to their lives and the work around them. Children engage in real-life activities in the classroom, the school and the neighbourhood. They also handle, explore and experiment with materials that are familiar to them.
The four areas outlined below support an approach that aligns with the way a child’s learning naturally occurs and focuses on aspects of learning that are critical to young children’s development. The areas reflect the integrated way in which learning occurs during children’s play and inquiry in Kindergarten.
Belonging and Contributing
- Sense of connectedness to others
- Relationship with others, and their contributions as part of a group, a community, and the natural world
- Understanding of relationships and community, and the ways in which people contribute to the world around them.
Self-Regulation and Well-Being
- Their own thinking and feelings, and their recognition of, and a respect for, differences in the thinking and feelings of others
- Regulating emotions, adapting to distractions, and assessing consequences of actions in a way that enables them to engage in learning
- Physical and mental health and wellness.
Demonstrating Literacy and Mathematics Behaviours
- Communicating thoughts and feelings through gestures, physical movements, words, symbols, and representations
- Literacy behaviours, evident in the way they use language, images, and materials to express and think critically about ideas and emotions as they listen and speak, view and represent, and begin to read and write
- Mathematics behaviours, evident in the ways they use concepts of numbers and patterns during play and inquiry; access, manage, create, and evaluate information; and experience an emergent understanding of mathematical relationships, concepts, skills, and processes
- Active engagement in learning and a developing love of learning, which can instill the habit of lifelong learning.
Problem Solving and Innovating
- Exploring the world through natural curiosity in ways that engage the mind, the senses, and the body
- Making meaning of their world by asking questions; testing theories, solving problems and engaging in creative and analytical thinking
- The innovating ways of thinking about and doing things that arise naturally with an active curiosity, and applying those ideas in relationships with others, with materials and with the environment.
Religious Education
- One of the things that makes Catholic education truly unique is that we integrate Catholic beliefs and values into the curriculum. In Kindergarten, this involves children’s songs, activities and prayers related to topics such as me, community, church times, special days, plants and animals and changes. Through various activities inside the classroom and outdoors, children are invited to experience the gift of God’s presence in creation.