The Alberta Kindergarten Curriculum

What does your Child’s Kindergarten Program Include?

Kindergarten is the first educational milestone in your child’s life. After elementary, academics are highly targeted and focused on. Because of this, school is remembered to only serve educational purposes. Airdrie kindergarten follows the Alberta curriculum, focusing on beginning to lay the foundations of academic achievement and developing your child’s decision making, creativity, initiative, their ability to learn, their ability to relate to others and their feelings of self-worth. In kindergarten, helping your child evolve to be a healthy, happy and active citizen in today’s society is prioritized.

The Alberta government is constantly reimagining and adding to the kindergarten curriculum. Ensuring that all children are exposed to key learning skills and societal consciousness is no easy task. A year of Airdrie kindergarten is centered along early literacy, mathematics, citizenship and identity, environment and community awareness, person

How does Alberta’s Kindergarten Curriculum Ensure your Child’s Learning is Met?

By the time your child is five years old and ready for kindergarten, they have already developed 85% of their core brain structure. During this time, your child’s brain acts like a sponge. What they learn is not just a memory, but forms who they are. With this, children require learning requirements where they interact. In Alberta’s kindergarten curriculum your child shares their ideas by playing with new words, understanding that letters have sounds which each carry meaning and formations. Solving problems involving numbers, patterns and objects, children begin to represent and describe numbers of objects up to ten. By connecting to their peers, an essential sense of self-confidence and identity is formed through exploring individuality. Children in kindergarten use technology to compare and contrast the world we live in. Through constructing and understanding the cause and effect chain, children begin to gain a perspective of their actions. A child will need to be self-assured in order to try new things and take risks. Kindergarten develops a mutual sense of respect where children learn to care for others and embrace optimistic attitudes. Through games and activities, children gain an appreciation for physical activity, acquiring the knowledge to make healthy choices. Additionally, by responding to art and engaging in music and dance, a new avenue of self expression is opened up.

How is the Kindergarten Program Different from Preschool/Daycare?

Part of the framework to the principles of Alberta’s kindergarten curriculum states that children interact and learn in a variety of contexts. When entering Airdrie kindergarten, children arrive having already learned from their community, homes and previous daycare and preschool programs. ASASA’s promotes this principle, embracing diversity.

Differentiating between daycare, preschool and kindergarten can be quite confusing. As parents, we want our children to require all the necessary skills to thrive but also the tools needed to have confidence when entering higher grades. Kindergarten focuses on play-based learning, discovery and grows a love to learn through building mathematical, creative and linguistic foundations. Preschool serves as an introduction to school. Both preschool and daycare involve playing and following a routine. They are not devoted to completing educational milestones as kindergarten is.

What happens in kindergarten is an opportunity for your child to be inspired by school. ASASA kindergarten is ready to support you and your child in this journey.