Innovative Program Welcomes Preschoolers to Kindergarten

A pilot project at 12 anglophone and francophone elementary schools will give preschool children and their parents the opportunity to get ready for kindergarten. The initiative is the result of a partnership between the Department of Education and The Learning Partnership (TLP).

Created by TLP, Welcome to Kindergarten™ is a program that provides resources that enable parents and teachers to help prepare students for the start of kindergarten by introducing early literacy and numerical-learning skills.

“This is an important initiative that supports the Quality Learning Agenda commitment to assist parents in ensuring that their children are well-prepared to learn by the time they start school,” Education Minister Claude Williams said. “Kindergarten is an exciting and significant education and developmental milestone, and by targeting children at an early age we will be able to place them on the track to a lifetime of success.”

Recent research has found that when parents are given the proper early-learning resources for use at home, preschool children are better prepared for school and learning. As well, parents who establish a foundation in early learning in their children while the children are at home are better prepared to support school success and lifelong learning.

The Welcome to Kindergarten program will provide an important start, familiarity and comfort for first-time students, and give parents the opportunity to develop new learning strategies to help their children throughout the school year.

Parents, along with their children enrolled in a piloting school, will be attending a Welcome to Kindergarten orientation session where they will receive a kindergarten welcome bag containing resource tools and activities to help children get ready for their first school experience.

The welcome bag contains magnetic letters and numbers, three books, thick crayons, pencil, glue stick, safety scissors, a notebook, coloured construction paper, templates of upper- and lower-case letters and numbers 1-10, as well as a parent-information pamphlet, Help Your Child Get Ready For School.

“More than ever before it is important that we reach out to parents and teachers, and help provide them with the necessary tools to make sure that children are given the opportunities to succeed at school,” said Veronica Lacey, TLP president and CEO. “Welcome to Kindergarten is a wonderful program that engages preschool children and their parents as they embark on their journey of lifelong learning in the public education system.”