Kindergarten is starting to seem real in our household.
Our kindergartner-to-be turns 5 this month. I'm now on our future principal's e-mail list. Portland Public Schools has posted its 2009-10 calendars and I've started figuring out how to deal with the days when there's no school. And we now have two kindergarten readiness activity kits to do over the summer.
The first one came to us from Gina Smith, a veteran teacher who has taught kindergarten for the past six years at Fir Grove Elementary in Beaverton. She was inspired to create her "Let's Get Ready for ... Kindergarten!" guide for parents because of her experience when her daughter was going into kindergarten.
"I felt like there's just not a lot of information out there for parents of what kinds of things you can be doing ... to help get your kid ready," Smith said. On top of that, she said, every year parents ask her for inexpensive, easy activities to do at home with their incoming kindergartners.
Her 32-page guide is divided into chapters on social and character skills, physical skills, reading skills, speaking skills, writing skills and math kills, plus a "countdown" for the final three weeks before the first day of school.
Smith also includes a list of helpful books and Web sites, as well as skills checklists and the occasional educational tidbit for parents -- my favorite was a chart outlining the developmental stages of writing, which shed light on my son's tendency to create random strings of letters.
"I really try to focus on the whole child," she said. "Sometimes when you talk about kindergarten learning. there's so much more to that than just the academics -- there's speaking and those social skills and learning how to become independent with zippers and backpacks and clothes."
The activities she suggests are inexpensive, easy and practical. For social skills, for example, she suggests using puppets to role-play with your child how to introduce himself to another child and potentially make a new friend. For reading skills, she suggests having your child use refrigerator letter magnets to make simple words.
Smith's guide is for sale for $8.95 per copy (there are discounts for multiple copies) at local Learning Palace stores and online at .
She's also doing two workshops that will bring the guide to life and allow parents to ask questions. The workshops are:
• June 18, 6:30-8 p.m., Cedar Mill Community Library, 12505 N.W. Cornell Road
• June 23, 6:30-8 p.m., Beaverton City Library, 12375 S.W. Fifth St.
Our second kindergarten readiness kit is from Portland Public Schools; it was handed out at one of the kindergarten readiness fairs the district held this winter. It's a big yellow pad of activities for you and your child to tackle together, one a day from June 1 though Aug. 31.
The activities target such things as listening, memory and conversational skills; letter, number, shape and color recognition; concepts such as opposites and words that rhyme; fine-motor skills such as drawing, tracing and cutting; counting; and following instructions. They're all fun, easy and quick.
Nancy Hauth, who works in kindergarten and pre-K support for the district, said there were only a limited number of kits because they're expensive to print. The district is working on producing smaller versions that should be available in early June. To find out more, you can e-mail her at firstname.lastname@example.org -- she'll be in the office all summer.
In the meantime, try this activity, which Hauth said was the most popular attraction at the district's kindergarten readiness fair -- "My Books," which consisted of several blank sheets of paper folded in half and stapled together into a little booklet for a child to fill in. My child spent a good 20 minutes on one, drawing pictures of houses to create a "house book."
Hauth added that there are two more things parents should do to prepare their children for kindergarten: Register them as soon as possible and read to them every day.
Hauth's job includes spreading the word about kindergarten readiness. If you're planning a large event for families with young children, she'd love to know about it -- just drop her a line.