kindergarten
Pluralkindergartens (some meanings)
- 1The grade in elementary school that comes immediately before first grade.
Most children in our district enter kindergarten the year they turn five.
Her kindergarten class graduated to first grade in a small ceremony.
Note
Here the word names a year of school rather than a building, and it behaves like first grade or second grade: children enter kindergarten, are in kindergarten, start kindergarten, with no article. The same countries also use the institution meaning, so the article is the quickest way to tell them apart. A kindergarten is a place; kindergarten is a stage.
- 2An educational institution for young children, generally between four and six years old; a nursery school.
The town opened a new kindergarten to serve families with young children.
Before enrolling her daughter, she toured three kindergartens in the area.
Note
A German coinage taken into English unchanged: the pedagogue Friedrich Fröbel coined Kindergarten, literally "garden of children," early in the nineteenth century. The German plural kindergärten is now obsolete, and the plural in use is kindergartens. In the US, Canada, Australia and India this meaning names the place itself, so it takes an article: a kindergarten, the local kindergarten.
- 3The two levels of preschool between nursery and the prep class; the second and third years of preschool.
Most schools here admit children to kindergarten after a year of nursery.
The kindergarten syllabus covers letters and numbers across its two levels.
Note
Philippine schooling divides the early years differently. The word covers two levels rather than one year, placed after nursery and before prep, and all of it still counts as preschool. A reader used to the grade before first grade should not map one onto the other. In the Philippines, kindergarten is followed by the prep year.
Practice
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Origin
A direct borrowing from German Kindergarten, literally 'garden of children,' a term coined by the German educator Friedrich Fröbel in the early 19th century.