Getting ready for kindergarten

Preschoolers will have the opportunity to attend kindergarten readiness workshops, which began on Sept. 28. These workshops allow Carbon County School District No. 2 (CCSD#2) to work with early childhood agencies so that preschoolers may be on track for kindergarten in three areas of learning: social and emotional, cognitive and physical.

According to Melissa Donough, Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) coordinator, some of the kindergarteners were not doing as well as they might have and this unifies the whole district under standards. In Saratoga and Encampment, the sessions will be monthly—10 total—and up north they will have six, longer sessions. However, those in Hanna, Elk Mountain and Medicine Bow may attend the southern workshops as well. Donough said that arrangements can be made for the workshop to come to anyone’s home.

There will be three workshops each for the main categories social and emotional learning, cognitive learning and physical learning. Appropriate behavior, literacy and math skills and motor skills are examples of workshops that preschoolers may attend. Each workshop will have a relevant professional in attendance. For example, Donough said, the kindergarten teacher, preschool teacher and a speech language pathologist will join parents for the “good communication skills” workshop, which is the first one.

“Your early education is kind of the foundation of everything that will be built for that child and so if they don’t come in with those good foundational skills and all the other kids do, they’re kind of going to be left behind.” Donough said. “We just want to make sure they’re all hopefully starting at the best they can start at.”

The workshops will examine the points where the child performs well in addition to items they may need to improve upon, Donough said.

Preschoolers attending will receive backpacks and for each workshop, they will get an appropriate gift to put in the backpack—like a book, crayons or a magazine subscription. There will be a drawing for an iPad and attendees will receive a $10 gift card to The Country Store.