THE JOURNEY TO KINDERGARTEN

JULIA MONETTE

Audience

My audience is parents who want to prepare their preschool aged children for kindergarten. The project focuses on how parents can be proactive in the year(s) leading up to the first day of school to prepare for kindergarten.

Purpose

Preparing a child for kindergarten has changed significantly in the last several years. The recommendations for kindergarten may vary by school district, but in general, kids are expected to know a lot more than when I entered kindergarten. This story explores the journey I went through with my son to prepare him for his first day of school.

Relevant Multimedia Design Principles

Personalization Principle – People learn better from multimedia lessons when words are in conversational style rather than formal style.

Voice Principle – People learn better when the narration in multimedia lessons is spoken in a friendly human voice rather than a machine voice.

Multimedia principle: People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.

Temporal Contiguity Principle – People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively.

Split-attention principle: People learn better when words and pictures are physically and temporally integrated.

Redundancy principle: People learn better when the same information is not presented in more than one format.

Image Principle – People do not necessarily learn better from a multimedia lesson when the speaker’s image is added to the screen.

Source: Multimedia Learning (Cambridge Press, 2001), Richard E. Mayer

Audience

My son Jacob has a September birthday. In addition to being a boy, which statistically are a little behind girls in being ready for school, Jacob is also child of divorced parents, which also statically lag behind in development. Because of these factors and my parental instinct that he wasn’t ready to start school, I decided to hold him back till the following fall. He was already attending a preschool. However, I didn’t feel like the curriculum at his current preschool was preparing him for kindergarten.

Audience

The webpage for our districts kindergartens provides a checklist of what parents can do to help prepare their child for kindergarten. My goal was to find a preschool curriculum that would help us reach these goals.

http://www.rochester.k12.mi.us/pages/79371/2015-kindergarten-information

Audience

It was a tough decision to take him out of a preschool where he was already comfortable with his friends, but I knew it was necessary in order to get him on track for kindergarten. After a lot of research and visits to local preschools, I found one that worked closely with the kindergarten teachers in our school district, Kiddie Academy.

Audience

Jacob started Kiddie Academy in the summer before his 5th birthday. When he started he struggled to count to 10 and hadn’t shown any interest in learning the ABC’s, let alone reading. At first the transition to a new school was difficult. Jacob missed his old friends and teachers. He was naturally a shy kid and I knew getting him prepared socially was going to require a lot of parental intervention.

Audience

The first couple of weeks were tough and I questioned whether or not I was doing the right thing. But I stuck with it. I called the director of the new preschool often to get updates on how Jacob was adjusting with his new classmates and teacher. A monthly newsletter and calendar were sent home to let me know what was being taught in the preschool classroom. This helped me prepare Jacob at home for what would be taught at school. Within a couple of weeks Jacob was starting to come home excited to show me how high he could count and what letters he was learning.

Audience

Now Jacob loves to pick out new books! We also make weekly trips to the library to pick out books and play with the other kids during open play on Saturdays.

Audience

In additional to the newsletter and calendar, Jacob also came home with a monthly homework packet. I was informed that the kindergarteners in our school district were expected to complete homework packets as well, and that this would help prepare Jacob for kindergarten. Adding homework to our nightly schedule is difficult, but we try to complete 1 sheet of homework a night and do a couple extra on the weekend.

Audience

Jacob also brought home a series of sight words to work on each night. The words from week 1 started out very easy, like “A, An, Am” and have progressively gotten more challenging. We work on sight word in the evening after dinner. Sometimes I use M&Ms for positive reinforcement.

Jacob is starting to recognize his site words on signs and when we read before bedtime.

Jacob’s school encourages the kids to work on projects at home and bring in to share with the class. Here’s Jacob with his Batmobile Valentine box.

Audience

Although Jacob was reportedly doing well socializing with the kids at his school, I knew it was important for him to play with friends outside of school as well. I started to plan play dates on the weekends with some of my co-workers and some of the other moms at his school. Sometimes it would take a little while for him to warm up and interact with the new kids. However, by the end of the play date he was already asking when he could see them again. I found that outdoor and structures activities worked better than “free play” at someone's house, at least for the initial play date.

The website for our school district provides a wealth of resources for preparing children for kindergarten. They also have a kindergarten registration night and other events to introduce the parents with the new school.

Source: http://www.rochester.k12.mi.us/pages/79371/2015-kindergarten-information

Audience

Since Jacob’s preschool works closely with our school district they offer an information night for parents to go over the requirements for kindergarten. Jacob was very excited to see where he’d be going to school and playing at recess.

Source: http://www.rochester.k12.mi.us/pages/79371/2015-kindergarten-information

Audience

We still have a couple of months to go, but Jacob has shown tremendous improvement in being prepared for kindergarten academically and socially. He’s able to count to 100, says his ABC’s with ease and starting to read! He’s much more confident in making new friends and trying new activities. Its been a lot of work and discipline, but its been worth it.