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February 6, 2026
February 6, 2026
Dear Parents
While you were enjoying a long weekend with your child, the Kindergarten team were busy learning and planning. On Friday we received training in Executive Function skill development to help teachers enhance their teaching strategies to purposefully develop Executive Function skills.
The development of Executive Function skills is all about self-regulation. Do we let our emotions take control and override the front part of our brains that makes decisions, or do we have the ability to self-regulate? Can we remember what someone just told us and link that to other things we have learned before? These are the things that young children are learning to do. However, the younger the child, the less able they are to control or regulate their emotions, so when things don’t go their own way then emotions can take over.
The main components of Executive Function are:
Working Memory – can you remember information?
Self-Control – can you resist impulses and regulate emotions?
Cognitive or Mental Flexibility – can we adapt to change?
Executive Function skills can be broken into 11 different skills, however we learned that there are 5 keys areas that need to develop first to be the foundation for other skills to develop. These are the skills we focus on developing at school and encourage parents to develop at home too:
Response Inhibition (Impulse control)
Emotional Control
Working Memory
Sustained Attention
Flexibility
These 5 areas help us to control our behavior and emotions to get things done. The children are developing the Executive Function skills they need for learning.nThese areas develop alongside each other, however if a child does not have emotional control their ability to learn the other skills is limited. These skills also develop at different rates.
As you can see from the diagram, the first to develop is Inhibition Control starting at about 1 years old with the steepest growth at around age 4. Working memory starts at about age 2, with the brain developing at the fastest rate between about 5 and 10 years old. Flexibility starts at about 3.5 with gradual growth through the early years and Planning does not start to develop until about 5 years old.
Therefore in Kindergarten we do not focus on time management, organization or planning as these Executive Function skills that will develop more in Elementary School, we just try to encourage the children to plan by breaking tasks into steps that can be followed one by one. For example, changing shoes at the cubbies is a multi-step task needing organizational skills and memory to remember all the steps. The children are young, so we see some children getting distracted by friends or when they have difficulty with unfastening a warm coat or when they come into school emotional from something that happened before they got to school. We see each child’s response inhibition developing as the “settle into the routines of school”. In the classrooms, as a child’s Working Memory develops the teachers will move from giving one step instructions in R1 to giving 2 step instructions and then onto more steps in R2.
For more information of Self-Regulation, please see the website articles below:
Executive Function and Self-Regulation
Unleashing Your Inner Superpowers: the Control Center of Your Brain
Blessings,
Gillian Wu
Kindergarten Assistant Principal
Important Dates for Feb 2026
Feb 16 to 20 (Mon - Fri) - Chinese New Year Break (No School)
Feb 23 (Mon) - Classes Resume
Feb 28 (Sat) - Family Fun Day (11AM - 3PM)
Mar 14 (Sat) - Spring Concert
If a different adult is coming to pick up your child from school, please notify the Kindergarten Office giving us their full name, Hong Kong Identity card number and their telephone number.
All people coming to pick up your child must:
Be on the authorized list on PowerSchool i.e. a parent has given us permission to release their child to that person.
Bring the purple pick-up card (original card, photographs will not be accepted).
In absence of the pick-up card, for persons we do not recognize we will either - check their Hong Kong Identity Card or call the phone number you have given us.
If we are unsure of the identity of the person picking up your child, we will check their identity.
If the person is not listed on PowerSchool, and you have not informed us, we will call parents to confirm.
If your child usually takes the bus home and changes to being picked up from school, please notify us. Please ensure that the person coming to school is on our authorized list. If in doubt, please give us their name
If you change or employ a new Domestic Helper, please remove your previous helper or add a new helper to the pick-up contacts on PowerSchool.
Parents, be empowered and equipped with the knowledge and resources you need to support your child's growth and success. This page provides resources, and we hope to help parents navigate the challenges of parenting and support your child's overall well-being. Make sure to check out our parent page HERE!
If your child is sick, please keep your child at home to rest and recover and notify the school by completing the relevant e-collect form on PowerSchool of:
Your child’s absence / number of days your child is likely to be off school
Your child’s body temperature (please state actual temperature, not just “has a fever”)
Once recovering from a fever (38C or above), please let us know the day and time your child’s fever subsided without medication. If you do not specify a time, we will use the time from your email. We can then specify how soon your child may return to school (48 hours after fever subsided).
Your child’s symptoms (not just “unwell”).
If your child has Chickenpox, Hand Foot and Mouth or other notifiable disease - please send in a doctor’s note confirming diagnosis. We also require a doctor’s note stating that your child is fit to return to school.
Red Eyes—conjunctivitis can be very infectious. If your child has red eyes, please give us a doctor’s note stating that your child is not infectious before they can come to school.
Department of Health requirements state that if a child has a fever (38C or above), or repeated diarrhea they need to stay home for at least 48 hours after the symptoms have subsided (without medication).
Even though your child’s fever may have gone, a child may still have a runny nose or bad cough and are not fit to return to school. Please keep them at home to rest.
Please do not send your child to school if they are still taking medication following an illness. The medicine may make your child sleepy and they still need time to recover and rest at home.
If your child has recovered but still has a mild cough (not chesty or coughing up phlegm), they may return to school but should wear a face mask.
International Christian School – Kindergarten
852-3156-1234 | kindergarten@ics.edu.hk | G/F, Kam Ho House (Block H), Kam Fung Court, Ma On Shan, N.T., Hong Kong
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