Making the Right Choice for Full Day Kindergarten (FDK)

Who are our Teachers? 

Our teaching and administrative teams are qualified, passionate, and caring individuals who bring to our school a unique blend of talent and expertise. Their collective experience provides valuable local and global perspectives to our classrooms.

What are the benefits of a reduced class size at this age?

There is increasing research indicating the many benefits that smaller class sizes can have on the overall performance of students:

• Meaningful staff-student relationships: With smaller class sizes teachers are able to truly get to know all of their students and their individual needs. This knowledge applies to the way they teach, how they assess, how they provide feedback and how they interact with each individual student.
• One-on-one interactions: Students are certain to have a greater sense that their teacher cares for them, and is there to support them in their learning process.
• Opportunities to participate: Students are given more opportunity to share their thinking, ask questions and be heard by their classmates in a small class setting.
• Class Culture: Small class settings allow teachers to instill a more cohesive class culture. Students are able to form relationships with all of their classmates and learn to support them.

How is Pre-Kindergarten different than Kindergarten?

There is more academic structure throughout the day in our Kindergarten Program. Although still a play- and inquiry- based program, the day is broken up into different subjects throughout their day. The program is also more enhanced in its exposure to literacy and numeracy.

Does Kindergarten have a curriculum?

Of course! Vincent Massey’s Reggio-inspired Kindergarten Program implements the province of Ontario’s full-day kindergarten curriculum. This curriculum is organized around four frames of learning: Belonging and Contributing, Self-Regulation and Well-Being, Demonstrating Literacy and Mathematics Behaviours, and Problem Solving and Innovating.

This curriculum is also complimented with Vincent Massey’s internal curriculum document which allows teachers to assess the areas in which children are excelling and encourage them to work ahead in this particular strength, and also identify areas where children may need extra support and ensure they have time to master this skill or learning objective. Our approach to learning allows for an education that enables all children to be successful and build positive attitudes towards learning.

Across the two years of kindergarten, the academic program is also enriched through the teaching of Visual Arts, Music, French, and Health and Physical Education.

Does play-based mean my child plays all day long?  

At a kindergarten level, play is a creative and active learning process which is integral and essential part of how children develop. We aim to foster each child’s natural desire to learn by planning learning invitations that provoke literacy and numeracy throughout the program. Our literacy and numeracy rich environments ensure students build on their age appropriate literacy and numeracy foundations.