Future kindergarteners and families are invited to training sessions

    Lunchbox? Check. Both shoes tied? Check. Butterflies in both mom, dad and child's stomach? Check. The first day of school can be intimidating for both the eager child and the parents that wave goodbye for the first time to their eager child boarding the bus. A kid taking on their first year of school brings a whole set of nerves that can leave parents scrambling to get their five or four year old prepared for this big milestone.
    "Most of the time (a lot of school districts) focus on getting the child ready for kindergarten so I had this epiphany that it's really the families that need to get ready and they can be getting ready well in advance," said Lindsay Camp, director of Early Leaning for the Cascade School District and Early Learning Fellow for the state of Washington.    
    Besides double checking all of the school supplies are packed away in the pencil case and reminding the little one to look both ways before crossing the street; parents also have to worry that their child is equipped and capable of keeping up with their peers in the new and foreign setting of an elementary classroom. Cascade School District is aware of this and is helping parents get all the training they need before the big day.
    "The objective is going to teach them something that their kids really, really need to know to be ready for kindergarten. It's to have a successful, fun and engaging transition into kindergarten while helping them develop those skills along the way." said Camp.
    There are 5 training sessions that both parents and children are encouraged to attend. Camp said that they're working to put together such fun and engaging sessions so people will want to return to each one, but that's not required nor is any pre-sign up.
    "We're developing and designing the activities to be the activities to be a lot of the time the children to be teaching their adults what the activities are. We're trying to incorporate stuff we're already doing in class with the spin on it that these are the activities we do in class, here's how you can do it at home," said Camp. "Because I think a lot of time families thinks the only place they can learn these things at are during preschool."
    Each training session will include some take home items to maximize strengthening the future kindergartener's skills and even break them in with a form of "homework". On Thursday, January 31, the first training session to kick off the project will concentrate on early numeracy. The take home product is a math book and focuses on things like categorizing, patterns and sorting. The training session will help parents incorporate early numeracy to help their preschooler's growth at home with things such as counting the laundry as mom folds the dry clothes.
    "We're going to show them (the families) the concepts we're teaching at school and how they can take that and do it at home," said Camp. "We're going to have a variety of activities set up, show them how we do it in class and then give them actual practical ways that they can go home and incorporate it into their family life."
    The next training session will be on February 28 for social and emotional development that includes a take home book. A month later will be the third training session, March 28, which will focus on early literacy for the little guys and will include read out loud books. April 23 will be S.T.E.A.M. and the take home here is science, math and art kits. May 23 is the final training session that is based on physical development and the material sent home this night will be a take home outdoor activity book.
    These training sessions will help ease the jitters and stress of preparing future kindergarteners for the skills needed and also a chance to intermingle outside the preschool classroom before their big day. These sessions, as a whole, are for the entire transition into the biggest milestone the kids will have until they decide to embark onto the next chapter, college, according to Camp.
    The training sessions will be held at Icicle River Middle School from 6 to 8 p.m. The project coordinators extend the invite far and wide, regardless of whether preschoolers are enrolled in the Kodiaks preschool program, Mt. Sprouts or a day care.
    "So these are all things families can and should be doing at home in conjunction with the preschool program," said Camp. "Having a series of family nights might be a really great way to bridge that gap, be a great kindergarten transition and be able to address very specific academic and social and emotional topics."