Kindergarten

"Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it." (Proverbs 22:6)

We live by this motto at St. Matthew as we help the children grow intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally in preparation for a productive Christian life.
Children enter Kindergarten with great enthusiasm for learning. We try to make the most of this by giving them a good academic foundation upon which they can build in the future. Along with the basics such as identifying shapes and colours and learning days of the week and months of the year, we add several significant learning modules.

We follow "The Writing & Spelling Road to Reading & Thinking" for the Language Arts portion of the curriculum. This is an excellent phonics-based programme which teaches the sounds and correct printing of seventy phonograms (i.e., single and multi letter combinations). Fifty five of these are taught in Kindergarten after which we begin to spell simple words which can be sounded out using our knowledge of the phonograms.

Saxon Math provides the basis for our Math curriculum. In Kindergarten we learn concepts such as patterning, counting with 1-1 correspondence, graphing, telling time to the hour, working with pennies, nickels, and dimes, creating and copying designs on geoboards and more.

In science-related topics such as weather, seasons, seeds, animals, and the seashore we progress through a workbook titled "God's World". We learn to appreciate the wonderful world God created and all that it contains.

Our Religion classes consist of stories from the Bible, songs and memory work. The children learn to retell stories in sequential order and retain important details.

We also work at developing small motor skills through cutting, colouring, and other artistic endeavours.

We average one field trip a month. We visit local sites to learn more about our community and related topics.

Once a week we have the opportunity to go to the library and take home 2 books. We have an "Accelerated Reader" program which helps to assess the student’s comprehension of a story. Our weekly time in the computer lab compliments and reinforces what is being taught in the classroom.

Physical Education activities help to develop large motor skills and give opportunities to practise good sportsmanship.