The Kindergarten program is organized into four broad areas or “frames.” These frames reflect the way in which learning naturally occurs during children’s exploration, play and inquiry.
The Kindergarten program is based on four broad learning areas:
1. Belonging and Contributing
2. Self-Regulation and Well-Being
3. Demonstrating Literacy and Mathematics Behaviours
4. Problem Solving and Innovating
These areas focus on aspects of learning that are critical to your child’s development. They also reflect the integrated way in which your child will learn through play and inquiry in our classrooms. These four frames also align with the four foundations of early learning used in Ontario child care centres: belonging, engagement, expression and well-being.
Belonging and Contributing
This frame encompasses children's learning and development with respect to:
- their sense of connectedness to others;
- their relationships with others, and their contributions as part of a group, a community, and the natural world;
- their understanding of relationships and community, and of the ways in which people contribute to the world around them.
The learning encompassed by this frame also relates to children's early development of the attributes and attitudes that inform citizenship, through their sense of personal connectedness to various communities.
Self-Regulation and Well-Being
This frame encompasses children's learning and development with respect to:
- their own thinking and feelings, and their recognition of and respect for differences in the thinking and feelings of others;
- regulating their emotions, adapting to distractions, and assessing consequences of actions in a way that enables them to engage in learning;
- their physical and mental health and wellness.
What children learn in connection with this frame allows them to focus, to learn, to respect themselves and others, and to promote well-being in themselves and others.
Demonstrating Literacy and Mathematics Behaviours
This frame encompasses children's learning and development with respect to:
- communicating thoughts and feelings – through gestures, physical movements, words, symbols, and representations, as well as through the use of a variety of materials;
- literacy behaviours, evident in the various ways 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 various ways they use concepts of number and pattern during play and inquiry; access, manage, create, and evaluate information; and experience an emergent understanding of mathematical relationships, concepts, skills, and processes;
- an active engagement in learning and a developing love of learning, which can instil the habit of learning for life.
What children learn in connection with this frame develops their capacity to think critically, to understand and respect many different perspectives, and to process various kinds of information.
Problem Solving and Innovating
This frame encompasses children’s learning and development with respect to:
- 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 innovative 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.
The learning encompassed by this frame supports collaborative problem solving and bringing innovative ideas to relationships with others.
Religious Education in Kindergarten
Catholic schools support high-quality faith-based learning while providing opportunities for children to learn in ways that best suit each child’s individual strengths and needs, as well as, their God-given talents and gifts.
The Catholic Kindergarten program is designed to help every child, created in the image of God, reach his or her full potential through a program of learning and faith development that is relevant and age appropriate.
Religious education is integrated throughout your child's day, as it is explicitly taught and embedded within all four frames of the Kindergarten program. Your child will participate in daily prayers and celebrate the different liturgical seasons.
For more information on The Catholic Kindergarten program please see the following resources: