The parent community at Canadian International School had a kindergarten wish list. The school answered it in the form of an exciting new Kindergarten wing at its Lakeside campus…
What does an ideal kindergarten for your kid look like? Canadian International School (CIS) recently asked its parent community what they would like to see in their kids’ first learning environment. The parents responded with a wishlist:
- A kindergarten with sufficient outdoor space for daily playtime and purposeful play;
- A curriculum that allows for inquiry-based learning with strong numeracy and literacy programmes, as well as bilingual options (Mandarin and European languages);
- A learning environment that’s warm and nurturing, with spacious and brightly-lit classrooms;
- A kindergarten with early childhood specialists and expert teachers among its teaching staff.
Taking all the above into account, CIS set out to make this wishlist a reality…
Say hello to CIS’ spectacular new Kindergarten wing!
Come January 2023, CIS’ Nursery and Grade 1 community can enjoy the school’s brand new Kindergarten wing. The new wing is designed with the school’s parent community’s wishlist in mind, as it comes with all the best facilities to support its inquiry and play-based approach. Here’s what parents and kids can expect from the new wing:
An enormous Outdoor Discovery Centre
The new Kindergarten wing comes with a 2,600 square metre Outdoor Discovery Centre (ODC) where kids can engage in purposeful play every day. Expect to find a vast play area with grassy hills and nature tunnels, equipped with a huge play fort and spacious yoga lawn. But that’s not all! The ODC has extra special features like sound and art gardens, a mud kitchen, as well as an eco pond where kids can use their imaginations and creative thinking during play. Through playing with mud, water, and loose items like sticks and mesh, kids will learn how to calculate, measure, invent, even hypothesise and test theories – all of which help to develop their thinking, communication and research skills.
Learning pods
The ODC is connected to spacious and natural light-filled classrooms designed in the form of learning pods, which are unique to CIS’ Lakeside campus. These pods will house students in the school’s English and bilingual programmes (Chinese-English and French-English), providing them with exhibition spaces and encouraging a strong sense of grade-level community.
That’s not all – there are brand new facilities for the whole school community!
That’s right – every student at CIS will be able to benefit from the facilities at the new wing! We’re talking about a full-sized gymnasium that acts as both a practice and tournament facility for older students, an indoor 25m swimming pool, dance studio, and a 200-seat black-box theatre – can we join too?!
Purposeful play at its best
At CIS, play is never “just about playing” – it’s a purposeful activity that helps kids learn as well. The school’s purposeful play and inquiry-based learning engages children, triggers their curiosity and enables them to solve problems creatively. Parents can expect to see all these in action at the school’s new Kindergarten wing soon!
“Play is an effective learning tool and not something that is done in place of learning. CIS believes in providing opportunities for students to learn through purposeful play both in the classroom and outdoors, so they can develop not only imagination and empathy but also their language and social skills,” says Dr. Colleen Drisner, primary principal of CIS’ Lakeside campus.
Excited to see how bub can benefit from CIS’ new Kindergarten wing? Sign up for CIS Lakeside campus open house on 21 April and see for yourself!
This post is in partnership with Canadian International School