Kindergarten

It’s midday on Friday at Hebrew Academy and the children of Kindergarten B are positioning themselves, eyes glued to the Smart Board, eagerly waiting to watch one of their favourite Simcha songs on YouTube.  The video starts and the children and their Morahs form circles and trains and dance around the classroom, fervently chanting the chorus.

By this time, the kids have already davened, collectively clapped the number of syllables in their names, attended story time at the school library and sung Shabbat songs accompanied by guitar. After their dance party, the class will participate in an Oneg Shabbat and then proceed to the Beit Midrash to watch a compelling Parsha play performed by our in-house Kollel Torah MiTzion team. It’s just another day in Kindergarten at Hebrew Academy, where Torah and literacy are taught through the eyes of a five-year-old.

Hebrew Academy’s Kindergarten is a special place where children acquire new learning strategies and form relationships with their peers and with adults. This social experience allows them to discover themselves as individuals, develop self-awareness, learn to self-regulate, and become creative, independent thinkers. Hebrew Academy Kindergarten teachers  foster children’s love of learning and lay the foundational skills they need to become lifelong learners.

At Hebrew Academy, the Judaic Studies curriculum is central to the Kindergarten Experience. tefillah, chagim, mitzvot, chessed, identity with Israel and the Jewish community, and Hebrew literacy are central elements of the program.

Whether Zooming with American peers to exchange book reviews, learning coding or playing interactive iPad games, mastering basketball dribbling, baking challah, visiting a rain forest at the Biodome, celebrating Purim with seniors or painting a fall landscape, students experience a rich and stimulating trilingual curriculum that lays the foundation for the next 11 years at Hebrew Academy.

The Kindergarten program fosters the development of psychomotor, affective, social, linguistic, cognitive and methodological competencies. With the support of their teachers, children take part in learning situations drawn from their world of play and their life experiences, and prepare to be active and thoughtful students in Elementary School.