The year is going great!

You may not have often heard how great things are going in 2020, but despite the fact that we too have had our fair share of challenges, we truly are very grateful for how well things have gone.

We have just finished parent teacher interviews which are an opportunity to connect with our families one on one, and reflect upon everything we’ve accomplished in the last 3 months. We all started in September with questions about being back in class. Our staff spent a great deal of time planning how to best adapt our classroom. We had new routines and procedures to adapt to as we balanced keeping everyone as safe as possible in an environment that would continue to allow for creativity, discovery and healthy social interactions.

In typical Kindergarten fashion, our students adapted quickly to new routines, and our parents have been supportive and, as always, a positive part of our experience. Our location has always been one of the core benefits of our program, and more than ever, our community centre has proven to be an ideal place for our small and happy cohort.

When in-person learning ended last spring, our teacher and teacher’s aide very quickly jumped in with truly creative ideas for virtual learning and fun. Our program sent home craft supplies and activities for our students and connected daily both as a group and individually. This year, we have continued to offer regular video links so that we can share parts of our day with both parents (who regrettably have been unable to experience the joys of classroom volunteering) and students (who may have had to miss classes due to slight sniffles). This has helped with communication and promoted a better understanding with our families of the learning that is taking place.

Many things have remained the same – we have taken a field trip, had in-class special events, and we are planning for skating lessons in the new year. We play outside every day, and have added outdoor singing to our playground time. We have learned even more about being a good friend, grown confident in sharing, asking questions and making decisions. We celebrate our friend’s birthdays, offer support and understanding when one of us is having a tough time, and cheer for each other’s successes. We have gone on nature walks, played in piles of leaves, tobogganed and played with buckets of snow. And through it all, we have learned so many new things about letters, sounds, shapes, colours, counting and patterns!

So yes, things really are going great in our kindergarten, and we can’t wait to see what the new year brings!