A week ago, my niece through marriage texted me and asked for help. She and my nephew have decided not to send their daughter to preschool. She is looking for scheduling ideas, activities and achievement goals appropriate for her daughter’s age. I immediately called her and began to offer ideas based on my years of teaching kindergarten. I quickly realized I could talk on this topic for hours and promised her to blog on this topic. 

Here goes, whether you are a parent, home schooling or a teacher trying to make sense of this new world, the next series of blogs will focus on trying to offer a compass to find your way. My goal is to simplify the expectations and integrate activities around literacy themes. It might seem too stripped back but sometimes during such an intense time of learning and change, given the new safety protocols, we just need to prioritize and simplify. In other words, we need to chuck our tasks and learning into smaller digestible moments that are fun. (We all like fun! As Dr William Glasser stated fun is a bi product of learning!)

To begin, the focus of this blog is: What should a kindergarten child be learning? 

Of late I have been complaining to retired colleagues that there seems to be a lack of unified direction in education. Is the government abdicating responsibility? The argument seems to be the curriculum has been provided, let’s honour teacher’s creativity and let them figure the facilitation and application out on their own. As a result, every teacher has to go out and sift through the copious amounts of resources and curriculum documents with the challenges of physical distancing not to mention the daily stresses of adjusting to a new daily school environment. (Hmmm thinking of Ontario what are all those educators who were employed in the 30-million-dollar machine of EQAO doing? Are they collecting CERB? …. What is this branch of the government providing during the pandemic?  Cheeky I know…)

For parents who are home schooling or supporting on-line learning, where do they start? If they are to go to the curriculum documents for each grade level, they would be faced with pages upon pages of expectations. I can only imagine how overwhelming and possibly confusing this would become. I thought hmmm, why is there not more sharing and honouring of parents who have already chosen to home school their children? Why not take a peak and see how they that distilled the abundant information.

I went to the Canadian Home Schooler site. A fantastic site that is rich with resources. I then went to the Ontario Curriculum check list.

Definitely a simplification of looking through the curriculum guidebooks for each subject which we as a teaching profession use as our bible, but even though simplified it still is rather detailed. 

In the interest of simplifying further and helping people see the forest for the trees, I have taken the kindergarten checklist and reduced it further to a chart that is more generalized, simplified and can fit on three printable pages, then assembled into one chart which can be laminated and posted on the or a central spot in the home. Click here to view the PDF.

Fellow educators this might help you with a very generalized guiding ‘road map’ that then you can make quick daily reference. When more direction is needed you can rather dive into your long range plans or extensive curriculum documents. 

It’s all about small chunks and keeping things in perspective. I once heard that it would take far longer than a full school year to teach all the curriculum expectations for any of the grades. As teachers we have to constantly be discriminating as to what are the most essential skills that our students require for the next grade level. 

Dazzle’s Challenge:

• Copy and print off the attached overview of the Ontario Non-Full Day Kindergarten Curriculum Checklist.

Quick Take Away:

• https://thecanadianhomeschooler.com/?s=kindergarten+expectations

Click to view my simplified Kindergarten Curriculum checklist