 Audrey, I recognize your name from before, and I've worked with you for years. Thanks for getting the new staff at Harvey and the rest of you who are joining us from our new sites. Looking forward to working with you this year. So before we get started in the training, this is a fantastic curriculum. This is our seventh year, and I'm honored and pleased to be part of doing this, but it's not something I could do without you. And so the first thing and most important thing I want to say is thank you because a good classroom teacher who really cares about the kids, that's the key piece, the foundation that makes all the difference in the world when you meet together with parents and students to help them feel ready for school. And so this program is nothing. I mean, great curriculum, great sites, great classrooms, they're nothing without you. So I'm just so excited to be working with you and to know that you're going to take the time after your work day to help families be ready for school and to help them feel welcome and connected at your local school. You are the difference makers, and part of why I do this job is because it's such a privilege to connect up with people who really care about kids and care about them feeling competent and capable and confident in school. So as we start this training tonight, there are pieces that you won't see, and I'm hopefully covering those, but the other part to that is to please know that I'm available. I want you to feel free to call me at any time because that's my role. I'm support staff for you, so that's my role. So let's get started here and advance to the next slide so that we can kind of get going. When I look at this program preparation, one of the things that I think is most important here is that you just kind of have a lead person. Whether it's the classroom teacher or the parent educator or it's the principal, you need a lead person to make sure, okay, we've got our dates for the program. How are we going to recruit people? You can recruit people through your local newspaper, through your school newsletter, through your daycares, through your preschools. Some of you are in a teacher role, and that's not going to be your role. But some of you are kind of saying, well, I've kind of taken the lead at my school or in my district, and so how do I do this? We actually have here at the Parent Information Center some forms we use in Grand Forks. They're not gearing up forms. There are forms. We happily share them with you. So I know you all have my email information because we've gone back and forth just getting you enrolled in this. So you email me and you say, you know what? I just want a sample of what it looks like to have a note that goes out that says, gearing up for kindergarten, here's what it is, and here's an enrollment form for our school. So ahead of time, that recruitment, I want to say that you want to give yourself about a four or five week check or lead time. As we look at this training being at the very end of October, my thoughts are for sites who are looking at this now might be a really good idea to start in January. Many, many of our sites start in January, and we look at going. In fact, we have a group starting the first Tuesday in January, January 5th. We also have a number of groups starting the last week in January after the Martin Luther King Daybreak. But we don't do Wednesday nights in our area. That's kind of a no-no night with church. And I'd like to keep it that way just for teachers also to have a breather that night. We don't do Friday nights. So your best nights are going to be Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday. And we're all over the board about which one works best. I say what works best in your district and what avoids the most conflicting days. Even in our building a couple of times, we're going to hold it. We'll have a second grade program in our building. But it doesn't involve everybody, and we still need to hold the program. And a district is large as ours, and just pick our days. Pick your days. It is a good idea, if you can do it, to do five classes, take a couple of week break, and do five more. Mostly just for the sake of giving everybody a chance to breathe a little bit, retool, and then start up again. I do have a number of sites that run straight through for 10 weeks. It really is what works best at your site. But I would like to see a lead person on the site. That's an important piece. What you need in the program, you need a classroom teacher. A para is a great thing to have. Not every site can have a para. But maybe you have a student teacher who's willing to come in and help you. You also need a parent educator. As we look down into how the evening is broken out, you will need both of those people. And the best thing you could do to get as many families as possible is also to provide child care. I always like at least one adult, but then we can use high schoolers that need volunteer hours for National Honor Society or some of those other things. But always one adult who's there to ensure that the supervision that is necessary is there, and just the safety for the little kids. So as you look at that lead person, you can put the word in there. Lead teacher, you can put the word in there. Principal, but somebody to look at preparation. Because as you look at this, one of the things you want to do is have signage on your front door. I want parents who don't know the building. You know, if they've had a first grader, they know the building. But if they've never had a child, it's really helpful to have signage that says, Hello, gearing up for kindergarten. Here's where we go. The classroom doors. Have a sign on the classroom door. Sign in sheets for parents. Taking care of those details ahead of time. That's just great wisdom because it saves you last minute preparation. Looking ahead is key to this program. If you start looking two weeks ahead, what do we need? Make sure we have all the kinds of supplies we need. Signs don't take long to make unless you're making them that afternoon at 3 o'clock. You never have enough time. So you're looking at signage for the front doors, welcoming people, signage to the classroom. It's this room that you're going in. Sign in sheets for parents. We do recommend the SNAC for the program. And the SNAC is not so much because the children need to eat. But it's part of how we kind of do procedure and routine. Taking turns, eating together as a group. We'll talk about that a little bit later. We do water and small paper cups. And then we have usually an allergy-free kind of snack. A lot of our students are allergic to peanuts. All our schools and Grand Forks are peanut free. So what we're really looking at is just basically saying something that's really simple, Goldfish crackers, Graham crackers, the animal crackers, you get at Sam's, whatever. You know, two or three crackers, maybe four, and some water. But that's a community time. So as you start to look at preparation, those are some of the things. If you go to the next slide, you can see what our signage looks like, where it says yellow, green, and blue room. That is one of our head start sites where we had those signs, right as people walked in the front door. We actually had a welcome to gearing up kindergarten sign on the front door. Then we had the signs, okay, here's your, you find your child's name. And we'd love to help parents point out that name. Yep, that's your name. Here it is right here. And then we're in the yellow room, or in this case, the blue room. So they walked down the hallway. The blue room was very clearly identified that families knew where to go because their child was in the blue room, and we had the blue dots on there. Okay? So as we look at that, those are the kind of things that make a visual. You know, kids see in pictures before they ever read words, and our preschoolers aren't reading words. So we want those visual signs to be there for students to see and for parents to see. So that's just an example of how signage can look. You can make animals if you want. You can have, you know, the raccoon room and the bunny room, whatever you want to do. But signage does make a significant difference. So as you look at that, okay, we talked about some of our supplies. You want to know what the teachers need in their classroom. The curriculum will drive a lot of that, but maybe it's some books because one of the things, if you look on this list here, is a library. We really like to see families take home a book each week, check it in, check it back in next week. We want families to get used to the idea that reading is an expectation and that reading is a really good thing, and it's something that we do in kindergarten. So when you look at teachers and say, what do you need in order to do this program? Is it markers? Is it bingodobbers? Is it paints? A lot of our schools use what's already there at school. If your school's good with it, use the supplies that are in your school. It's going to save your school money, and most schools have enough to, you know, absorb into what's already in the building supply-wise without running things out. A significant thing you need to do, you have a CD-ROM that comes with your curriculum. So those of you who have the curriculum, especially if you are the parent educator, a number of take-home materials are on that CD for lessons each week. We'll look at what some of those are as we move on in this video, but those things, if you print them up ahead of time, depends if you have a print shop or you're running your own off, but those are really good to have run out two or three weeks ahead of time for each lesson. Again, so you're not panicking the night before, or if you're the teacher and your child has the flu, it's much easier to be able to say to that person who's subbing for you, I've already got the stuff ready for you. Preparation, child care. We totally recommend having child care. That's an important piece that allows a lot of families to come. Our program is free. We make the child care free as well. With the gearing up for kindergarten dollars, you actually can use those dollars to pay child care providers if that's how you choose to use them. As long as it's for the program, your district can do that. A lot of times we use UND students here in Grand Forks, but in a smaller community, you're probably not going to have that, but you might have a stay-at-home mom or somebody who does day care who's willing to come in and be paid to oversee the child care. We like to have one person for every five children. If you have little pumpkins under five years old, that's a lot of activity. So we like to have one person for every five children. Volunteers are a great thing. Just make sure that you know who the volunteer is and you're comfortable with their credibility in the community and definitely having, again, an adult overseeing. But if you know what room they're going to be in, what are you going to do for the children for activities? Do you have Legos for them to use? Do you have Duplo blocks? Do you have some coloring sheets? Maybe for the last 20 minutes you're going to show a video. Make sure you have all those things ready. It makes it so much easier as the program comes to... we're getting ready to hold the program. And again, the library. We use bins in Grand Forks, just some bins that we got at Walmart. But we have about 60 books in each bin. So every one of our classrooms has a bin. The teachers put the books out in the evening for the children to be able to check them out and take them home. But it's just a nice portable thing to have. Some teachers use their own classroom library. You can do that if you want to. We just want to ensure that this is something you can look at ahead of time and make arrangements for it rather than go at the end, oh my, what am I going to do? So that's why we're talking about preparation ahead of time. Program evaluations. Those are going to come to you. Jeannie from NDSU will mail them to you two weeks in advance. But a lot of sites have called us and said, I don't see them. I don't see them. Well, if you said to us, you're the contact person, that's who we're going to send them to. What we also know though is sometimes they get stuck in the office or they get stuck in the principal's office. So we want you to call us and say, hey, where are those evaluations? When the program evaluations arrive, they attend in sheet to accompany those as well. So that's just something it's nice to have ahead of time. As we move on in this presentation tonight, I'll explain to you how those work and when they work. We also have a demonstration on our website because you don't do these that often. And so we want you to be able to say, oh yeah, how do I do this? So we want you to be able to go onto our website and see a demo for that. Go to the next page for preparation. We're looking at, for a classroom teacher, you want to have a list outside your door. Everyone loves to see their name in print. The other part to that, just especially with four-year-olds, we want them getting used to, I'm Judith Canerza, helping me find my name on a list and identify what Judith Canerza looks like. This is a good window for you as a teacher too when your classes start coming in and saying, oh, you know what, Judith knows her name is Judith. It begins with J. But boy, the little guy next to her, Michael, he doesn't even have a clue that his name is on a list anywhere. He doesn't even know that M is a letter. That's some really good stuff for us. It drives our preparation as we work together to help families say, hey, these are things you could be working on before kindergarten starts next year. So a classroom list is a good idea. Another thing is listing and posting each evening's activity schedule. As you look at that, on the next slide we'll go to, you'll see, we just do a quick, short schedule each week. But that helps parents know what the centers are going to be, the timing of things, and just it really helps you understand procedure and routine. And that's an important part for our kiddos is teaching them procedure and routine. Some of your kiddos are going to come from chaos, and their routine is chaos. We want families to know that procedure and routine is an important part of children's well-being and what they can expect in kindergarten. Parent and child name tags. The really cool part about name tags is at the beginning, mom and dad are going to pick up the name tags and put them on the kids. But as children get to know their name and that sort of thing, hopefully they're picking out mom and dad's name tags too. They're arriving and they're saying, Michael, here's my name tag. I see it. And mom hears yours because you're Jan and dad, you're Dave. And picking up their name tags. Name tags serves for us as teachers to be able to communicate personally, but it also serves with helping children recognize family names. We do have sign-in sheets. You will actually get a sign-in sheet in the evaluation packet because we do keep track of attendance. We've asked families, and we're hoping you do too, to commit to nine out of 10 classes. I get that kids get the flu and that kind of thing, but we don't want you skipping because you decided to go to the volleyball game. If this is something families are doing, we want them to be able to make that commitment. And so just by saying that when they enroll in our program, it's that reminder that this is an important thing. We also have children sign-in sheets, and you'll see a sample of that coming up. The children sign-in sheet is really neat because at the end of the 10 weeks, you can actually see if there's been a trajectory of progress in how children write their name. That'll give you clues as to families who are working on things with their kiddos at home. Families who need to. As you look at the sheets and the parent educator, that person who is doing that, the classroom teacher, might say, notice these sheets. Would you remind parents? And then maybe you're sending some sheets with just the right amount of lining home with families that says, hey, practice helping your child write their name. We also have coming up on another sheet that you'll see, an attendance chart with stickers. Again, that's just one of our ways. We'll have to have that, but we've ordered them online, and we use them because we want kids to be able to find their name. We also want them to be able to track how many times they've been and be able to use that fine motor to place their name on a sticker. A book bin, which I mentioned, and a welcome gearing up for kindergarten sign. That sign at the front door is really important. We want people to know, yep, you're in the right place. There's nothing like walking into a new place. I did a workshop yesterday in Thief River Falls, and I had a teacher say to me, I never want to be the first one in the building. There's just something about that. But when there's an inviting sign, it makes people feel welcome. So that welcome to gearing up for kindergarten sign is important. So if you go to the next sheet, if you take a look at that, there's just a sample of the name tags. There's a sample of a gearing up for kindergarten sign-in sheet. We ask parents to sign in, and we want just to know their phone number the first night. Next night, you might not need all that stuff, but it's the sign-in sheet, the parent's name, the child's name, the phone number. The evaluations, like I said, will send you an attendance sheet, but you can make one for your own district. If you look off to the right, you see our book bin. That talks about our backpack books. We have kids return their book, then they check out another book. If you notice off to the left, it's just a quick synopsis of what's going to go on that evening in your class. Go to the next slide. The classroom teacher preparation, when you look at this, if it's at all possible, it's great to have a place for your students to hang their coats. We've hit that time of year they're coming with coats. And the next slide that you'll see, you'll see a little thing. It says Ryder, Simran, and Xander. We actually just made labels for our kiddos that we took down at the end of gearing up each week and put them up at the beginning so that families would know. That's kind of what's going to happen when your kiddos come to kindergarten. Somewhere there's a labeled locker or cubby or coat hook. Checking out a book each week, that checkout thing. There will be a table tent when they do the centers. We want you to be sure you print up those table tents ahead of time. They're easy. They're reusable. If your site has done them before, then you just save them for next year because basically when the parents come in and they're going to those learning centers, which we'll get to in a few minutes, they're going to know what to do at those centers and the materials are going to be there. The table tents are going to be there. All the activities are a developmentally appropriate level for the children, but we want parents to have a sense of efficacy. We want them to know what to do. We want them to feel competent in coming in and working with their child, not doing it for their child but doing it with their child and letting children learn through the hands-on activities. The other thing is what stories we'll use for story time. We have some recommended books, which we'll use for story time because you have two story times each evening. One is during the parent-child time and then once again when you're just with your children. Snack time routine. When are you going to serve snack? Most often the snack is served after the parents leave. We have children wash their hands then we have them have a snack and a time together. That's a great thing for your parent to put out while you're reading with families during that story time. Every week you're going to have some literacy activities. We talk about that when the children leave or when the parents leave and the children are with you. Some transition songs. So as you look at this, this is the kind of stuff you want to be ready for ahead of time. Not that it's not stuff that you don't do every day all the time. But the idea behind it is that if you're ready, you're not going to be panicking at the last minute. So we go to the next slide. One of the things that we're talking about, those attendance charts. That's where children can find their name, across the row and be able to do sequencing and putting their stickers on the one and before. Those are laminated name tags. One of my teachers uses those every year. But she's got them, they're ready to go. And when the kids come in each week, they are starting to look for, this is my name, this is where I put my coat. We just want that sense of competency and that sense of knowing what to do. We really want the kids to feel comfortable with the kindergarten environment. And the cool part about that is, if you have a nervous parent, you have nervous kids, and hopefully this eliminates some of that nervousness and makes families feel welcome like, yeah, okay, this is a place I want to go and this is a place I'm going to be comfortable. So I just wanted you to have some of the visuals of what we do. You can do it in the way that fits you and fits your school best. Any questions? I'm going to move to the next slide. So I'll teach your preparation. You know, we just want you to make sure that you have an overview of each topic. The first week is what to expect. You know, just that you know what's there. Your supplies and materials are ready. Your lesson plans, you know, they talk about meeting the needs of all learners. Honestly, families are going to do things at the pace that they are and what they know. Our job is to help them feel competent and help them feel capable and confident in what we're doing. We want families to know what the learning environment looks like. Now, that one is bolded, asked for two weeks in advance. Really truly what we have a coordinator in our district, some districts do. And when people order supplies for us, we have to go through a PO process. So that's what I'm saying. Know your process in your district. Two weeks in advance pertains to a PO process for us. If you can just go out and get it and be reimbursed, that's fine. But again, last minute, that's just not always easy. Or it doesn't make the heart race. It does make the heart race. It's not so smooth. Plan on being there 15 minutes prior to class and 15 minutes after. We do keep our doors closed. And we put a sign up that says, the doors will open at 6 p.m. But we also put book bins outside so that people can read books with their kids before class. Two things happen. The first night you're going to get people half an hour before. Well, most of our daycare providers actually come from another daycare site. We, in Grand Forks, we have on-care workers. And so if they're doing daycare at a different site for us, it takes that 15 minutes to get here. And we just tell them, we need you here 15 minutes prior to class. We want parents to be able to drop off their children, say their goodbyes, and then come to the classroom door and wait with us. But we don't open our doors till 6 p.m. If it's a minute before, that's fine. But don't feel that pressure just because families are there. We want to let families know we want to be so ready for them and that we'll open our doors right on time, if not a minute before. But putting those books out there for them to read, that's a great, great thing. Everybody in the building should know if you're in a bigger building where the classes are, where the parent classes are, where the children's classes are, and where the childcare is. That's that signage piece, again, that just helps everybody feel comfortable with the building. Some of your buildings are small and everybody knows the building. It's those families who've never been there before. Those are the ones we just want to say, I want to make you feel welcome. I want to make you feel comfortable. And I want this place to be your place and my place because we're here together to help your child succeed in kindergarten. Let's go and see what it looks like. So this first page that you're seeing here, this is actually a handout that your parents are going to get the first night. But it is a rundown of what each evening looks like. So if you look at the bottom right corner of this slide, it says parent handout overview of the program. This particular handout is on the CD. So you get two CDs with your curriculum. They are the same. But contained in each of those CDs is the materials that the parent educator will need and the materials that the classroom teacher will need to download and print. But this one is up here because I want you to see. First, you start with the parent-child activity time. That's really important. Your families are going to walk in and there's going to be several centers for them to be able to move through out about 30 to 35 minutes. The evening is typically broken down into an hour and a half, it should be an hour and a half to two hours. The first half of the time is parents and children together, going through those learning centers. I usually say if it's an hour and a half, so you have 45 minutes, add about the 30 to 35 minute mark. You want to pull parents in with their children, having kiddos on their lap, and you want to do a story time. You want to do some of those reading where maybe there's response readings because there's rhyme. There's asking questions about the story. We want parents to know what literacy looks like, what engage with your child looks like, not just reading a story but asking questions. It might be a camping story. Does this remind you of our camping trip this summer, or we've never been camping. I wonder what it would feel like to go camping and sleep under the stars. That literacy time, that reading time, I just call it a golden time with families. Want you to be able to sit with your families and model for them the joy of reading, the connectivity of reading, and just that we're going to be doing this next year in kindergarten all throughout the year with your child and what you do at home matters because it sends a message to your children that what happens in school is important. This is your work and we're back at that work up. So that first 45 minutes encompasses parent-child activity time and the reading time. At that point, at about the 45 minute mark, when I looked back earlier and talked about some of the things to prep, have a transition song where your children say goodbye to their parents. That first week for some kiddos is tough, just like that first day of kindergarten or two for some kids is hard. And sometimes it's the mommas and the daddies that make it tough on them too. But having that parent educator say, okay, parents, say goodbye to your children. We'll see you in about 45 minutes. You want that parent educator to lead them out of there and they're going to their spot to learn, to do the learning for that they can do to help their child prepare at home. Then you've got them in the classroom and that's where you get to, actually you get to shine. Take some of those things you do with your students in the everyday classroom and make them a four-year-old level. Some more literacy, some music and movement activities. Things that it can be the teacher, one teacher to 15 children. So they're learning about taking turns. They're learning about listening. They're learning about following directions. It's at such a rudimentary level but this gives you a chance to help your children see what it's going to be like to feel, to be in a kindergarten classroom. So then you go to the very end, family activities. That's not actually something you will be doing there during class. There are things that families will take home each evening. So we're going to, we'll move on because that's some of what we'll talk about. But this handout is an overview of the evening. So I would say to parents, take this on your fridge until you get used to the procedure and routine of each evening. But so they're spending some time with their kiddos and then they're spending some time in their own session, their own parent session. And part of that is also that they will be making that take-home activity for their kids to be able to do some things that continue the preparation at home that they started here in the classroom during the week. Let's move to the next slide. All right. So during the parent-child activity time, if you take a look at this picture, there are multiple centers going on. You can see the easel. There was a painting time. You can see that there's a number of tables there and parents are working with their kids because in the gearing up for kindergarten curriculum, there is always a literacy center, a math center, a science center, and a sensory motor center. And I'm not telling you to reinvent the wheel. Let me promise you that. You're teaching all day long. If you've got those centers going on in your room, tailor them to the level of a four-year-old looking at each week's curriculum and what the theme of it is. But use that. Don't reinvent the wheel. I want you to be able to be able to set up your classroom no problem and not feel like you have to totally take down set up and then take down again at the end of the evening and reset up. Be wise with what you already have and use that well. For the circle time and the story time, hopefully you've got a carpet or a mat or a space where families can come and sit. And if parents don't put kids on their lap, kind of encourage them to do that. If you've got a mom who is expecting, as we often do, give her a chair. But have her put the child on her knee if she can. We just really want to build that bond and that closeness. And oftentimes there's families that just, this is just not part of their routine. And in the world we know today, which is why we have book bins, a lot of our families, the library's just not an option. They've been working all day and the last thing they're going to do when they come home is make a trip to the library. So just looking at that, that circle time, that story time with families, that is so key. So if you look at this parent-child activity time, that's that first 45 minutes. Center time, as you see, there's 30 to 35. Circle time is that up right up to the 45-minute mark. Boy, that time is a valuable time. And you can do stories. You can even have a guest reader turning pages with you, letting your kids just participate the way you do. You really get to shine as who you are and tailor this to. This is school readiness. We're using literacy centers. We're using math centers. We're using science. We're using sensory motor. But I get to do this how I do it best in my style. I want you to be who you are. I want that authenticity of the teacher who connects caring and connects learning with the families. The same with your story time, your circle time and your story time. All right. This, what to expect, is actually in the classroom teacher's manual. That little pamphlet that you have, those of you who have your curriculum, that little pamphlet is the classroom teacher's manual. On here it says page seven. On your classroom teacher's manual, it's actually page 11. When I did these slides and I kept the same slide, I said, oh my gosh, there's not enough at the classroom teacher's book to explain to them at the beginning. So if you look at this book at the beginning of the book, you will see a little bit more about set up, some of the stuff we covered earlier. So what you see is page seven is actually page 11 in your book. But if you look at this, when you're getting ready to set up, you'll see, and I mentioned that, you'd have a literacy center. Well, it shows you what to do because it's alphabet letter play. That will be our next slide. The floor puzzles for math and a color parade. Science is sink or float. The sensory motor is painting and drawing. The circle time books. So the first lesson, if you notice, is what to expect at the top. That's the same session that parents are getting as well. We have the same title. Because this is the first night, you'll see that the books are, Pete the Cat, Rockin' in My School Shoes, The Kissing Hand, Tom Goes to Kindergarten. Most of you, I'm guessing, have Pete the Cat. You might have The Kissing Hand. Really, truly, if you have books that are about going to school and you don't use those particular ones that are there, we're fine with that. This is teachers that put this curriculum together. And what they're saying to you is these are things we would use on the first week, the first days of school. So that's the kind of thing. But if you've got Ms. Bindergarten Goes to Kindergarten, you can use that book if that's your favorite. You don't have to use the ones that are there. These are suggestions. But those are the books that we would, you know, kindergarten teachers have recommended. Then if you look at an activity toward the school, you might say, you know what? This group is this. Ooh, this is a little bit wild. I don't think we're going to tour the school. But maybe what we'll do is, together with parents, next week we'll tour the school. We want the kids with their parents, because we're not feeling like very comfortable that we would maybe lose somebody or something like that. It is a suggestion. But if you look at, so you see what your center activities are, then you're looking at, let's talk, OK? Here's some ideas about what your conversation might be. As classroom teachers, I'm trusting that you're going to come up with great questions. But this was to get you started. But the big idea, you know, what are the rooms in the school? What does it feel like to go to school? Where are we? Where's our room? You know, when you get to kindergarten, you'll be going to lunch and school. So this is just the kind of thing that we just want you to see what each week is laid out to look like. If you go to the next slide, OK, your literacy center is called alphabet letter play. So the idea behind this one, if you look at the longer, the vertical up and down, it's saying, OK, if you have, you're going to take bottle lids from milk cartons and you're going to make letters of the alphabet. Most of you probably have those in your classroom. You don't have to go and make those. But if you don't have them in your classroom, ask your teachers to save the tops off of milk cartons. And in a short while, you'll have, you know, 52 lids for lowercase and uppercase letters. It's just an idea. It's a suggestion. These come from classroom teachers. But also, we look at things on a shoestring and trying to make best use of district dollars and make things easy. If you look at this alphabet letter play down at the bottom of that, that's actually a table tent that you'll see the printable of in your CD. And that's so parents will know what to do with it. Basically, you're going to have the kids find the alphabet letters of children and names and make their name with those letters with the alphabet letters. Not too many people could do that at once if you only have one set of letters. So maybe you build a set of supplies or maybe you've got two or three sets in your classroom. Same with science. Take a look. Sink or float. I mean, basically you need a container, some water, and items that sink or items that float. And then it's about predicting. Having the kids guess which ones are going to sink, which ones are going to float. Both of those are examples of your centers. They're not hard ones at all. And what classroom teachers tell me is I often take these into my own classroom as well. But at the bottom of the slide, that's what your table tents are going to look like. In fact, if you go to the next slide, so alphabet letter play, we kind of blew it up. So as you go onto the CD, you would print that. And so as you see, you would just fold it over like a table tent. So on either side is the direction. Help your child as needed. Find the lids with letters of his or her name. Scramble the letters and encourage them to put them in order. So if it's a child who knows ABC order, goodness knows. I don't know that anybody would want to do all 26, but maybe you chunk it into five letters, like the CDE or something like that. Help children write their names or make the names of family members. And the idea is just that helping children recognize the letter and the letter sound for letter sound recognition. As you can see, the activities are not hard. They're easy to do. It would take some time to save all those. But if you don't have enough alphabet letters in your room, here's one way to do it. So each of the centers comes with the instructions like this. Off of the CD, there are the table cards. If you look in your book, you see that the instructions are there. But the table tents are printed off of the CD. So I just want to be clear about that. So now if you look at the next slide, so just say you don't want to go through the entire book and ask what books are supposed to be for what week. Gearing up for kindergarten when it originally started was 16 lessons and they ran it in 16-week increments. At this point, most districts, in fact, 95% of our districts are doing 10 weeks. It became a manageability issue. It's much easier to do 10 weeks than 16. And families had a hard time committing to 16 weeks. So what we did, your manual has 16 lessons in it. So if you look at it, week one was session one. But look at week two. That's session three brain development. It's not to say that you can't use session two. You absolutely could. But what we did was we said to kindergarten teachers, looking at these 16 lessons, what would be the most important ones you would choose. And that was our rationale for putting them this way. So week one is session one. That one corresponds. But week two is session three. Week three is session four. We felt like reading was extremely important. Week four is session seven. Week five is sessions eight and 14. Week six is session nine. So as you look at that, that gives you a chance just to see what lessons kindergarten teachers thought were the most important. This curriculum was developed by researchers at NDSU Extension. And it is now seven years old. We've updated it with a lot of input with kindergarten teachers. But what I also know is we just continue to evolve as educators. So if you see something, if you actually have time to peruse the manual and you see something that would be of benefit to your students, go ahead and do that lesson. You're not locked into this. This was just a suggestion from kindergarten teachers as the most powerful lesson. If you look at week one and week 10, they do correspond with the first and the last lesson. So anyway, and that's the books that go with it. Just so you can say, do I have these books or what would I replace these books with? So once the parents have left the room and you're there with the children, let's go to the next slide. You're there with the children. I love this time because your centers are set up. You're going to have snack time, but this is actually where you get to do things that you want to do with kids. Maybe you've got a special procedure and routine that you do. You do songs and chants. You might do on your whiteboard. But this is a time for you to interact with your children, doing some marching, doing some reading. I always say, have your children learned how to wash up in the classroom. Wash your hands and sit down and participate together in snack time, waiting until everybody's done. Have a story. We're going to check out our books. We get our coats ready. We do ask the parents to come to the classroom and get the children. So at the end of the evening, we want the children to have their coats on. We really emphasize to the parent educator, this is a good time to get your children home and get them ready for bed so that they're fresh and ready for the day tomorrow. We also tell our teachers, we know you have to get back tomorrow. We know that you have a job to do and that you have to get back here tomorrow. So we want to get everybody out of there within 15 minutes. That piece to that is key to us. It also sends a strong signal to parents. Don't hesitate to email us. Don't hesitate to call us. But after class is not a good time to have a discussion. So when you look at that, this class time, it goes so fast anyway. And if you want to let them have some play time, that's fine too. We want to kind of have children. This really is our social and emotional connecting time. If you look at the next slide, there's some things like one of our teachers said, you know, I read some extra stories. I do some additional rhyming or patterning. The next slide on that one is an example of a teacher who said, I read who stole the cookies from the cookie jar and I play the game who stole the cookies from the cookie jar. She said I use it with an ice breaker because in the cookie jar, I've got some rhyming going on and in the cookie jar is a cookie with everyone's name on it so it helps them recognize their names. An action song, letter size that most teachers know. Eat your snack and talk, check out books. Bottom line is this time is for you. You get to decide how to spend this time with your students. It's not in the curriculum. But what I've found is teachers like to extend things to go with the children from parent time, that time with their family, or they like to try some things that they do with their own students in kindergarten. I've not yet had a teacher say, I don't know how to fill this time, but if you have any questions, don't hesitate to give me a call. So while you're with your children, classroom teacher, the next thing is the parent educator session. So the parents go with the parent educator. This is at one of our schools. You can see there were a lot of parents. We actually had two classrooms and what we did was we had the parents were all together, but we had two children's classrooms. But our job there is to really help the parents know, and let's go to the next slide, help the parents know what they can do when they're in class with their children and when they're at home each week. So the first night we say to parents, you know what, when you're in class, number one bullet, understand the importance of interacting with your child. So part of the parent educator's role is to say, our cell phones are off. We want to be fully attentive to our child, and we want to let them know that they are important to us and that their learning is important to us. This is a tricky one, as you all know, because our brains are wired to hear that ding in our cell phone or to feel that buzz in our pocket. So we really say to parents, unless your wife is expecting a baby and you're the one who has to bring her to the hospital, please shut your cell phone off. We live in a culture that just is so wired and to have parents do that, it's a hard thing. But we want to say, we want that signal to your little pumpkin that says, you are important to me and the time I'm here with you, I want to fully be present. Parent educator, you're key on that. In fact, the first night, parent educator, once you get your stuff set up, I'd love for you to be in the classroom with the teacher observing because a lot of it is going to drive what you say to families as well. In the parent session, we want you to encourage parents to share their experiences from week to week, what they're doing, what they're learning, ask questions. If you're the parent educator and you don't know the answer, call me, call a kindergarten teacher. You know, don't feel like you have to know everything. And maybe you are a kindergarten teacher and you still don't know the answer. You know, we don't know all the answers, but certainly we are happy to see if we can help you answer parents' questions. If it's a principal thing, I've got to go to my principal and check on that because I'm not sure how our district handles that kind of thing. One thing I want to do though is honor parent questions. So if they have one, make sure you're writing it down so that you have a chance to check on that and respond by next week. After the first week, I want you to begin by reviewing the last week's lesson so that that way you can say to parents, we did this and we did that. How many of you worked on this at home? What did you find? You know, breaking the ice. The parent curriculum, and we will be getting into that in a minute, has way too many things for you to be able to do in an evening. You as the parent educator have that big binder. Oh my goodness, there's way more than you could possibly do in an evening, so you need to pick and choose. Kim Bushaw, who did that? Oh my gosh, I just love her. She gave you enough stuff to last a lifetime. And there's ice breakers there for every week. Well, maybe you're going to do the ice breaker the first couple of weeks and then you're going to say, I just don't want to have time for that because I really want to get to the meat of it. Part of what you will be doing in the classes is you will be having parents prepare that take home activity. So you've got to really be task on, ready to roll each week. So as you look at this and you begin, let's go to the next slide, you begin by helping parents understand that these classes are preparation for next year, helping your child in the journey, and it is a journey of responsibility, the journey of routine and procedure in school for all of us, like our children who need to be listening to the teacher. If they're listening to you at home, that's great, but if they're not, it's going to be really hard for them to listen to the teacher. So as a parent educator, you're saying to them, this is a really great time for you to start looking at how well your children listen and follow instructions. This is a time for you to say to your child, you know it in class, you're going to be able to raise your hand and your teacher will call on you sometimes, but not all the time. Routine, voice level, helping parents understand that the teacher is not going to repeat things 20 times. That children are needing to be listening to that voice level so the teacher is calm, making your voice match mine, helping kids understand those things. For some of our kids, they've never taken turns, or they haven't been away from parents. In today's world, the majority have been away from parents, but sometimes they still have time parting, following directions. As the parent educator, you're really that liaison between the school and the home, and you're really saying, this is what to expect. And so if you help parents understand this, you're also going to help them practice it with their children at home. So as a parent educator, what I really want you also to be doing is looking in the classroom each week and kind of driving home, watching where children are writing their name, watching where parents maybe are forgetting the cell phone thing and reminding them that. Just in a way that says, your presence, P-R-E-S-E-N-C-E, is the greatest gift you can give to your child in this program, so that they feel like their education matters, but probably more importantly, that they matter. So as you look at the next slide, the parent curriculum is loaded, as I said. There's a topic introduction each week. There's the objectives of the lesson. There's the icebreaker, the contents, the switching gears, the family take home activity, and then the handouts. There's so much information each week, and I wouldn't even suggest that you print it all. If you look back a few slides that we did, that what to expect, I would print that one, so they have the procedure and routine place. But if you go to our next slide, this what to expect is yours as the teacher, as the parent educator in the classroom. So I want you to know this one is yours. They all look very similar, but they're a little bit different. So look at this one. Okay, what to expect is the title of the lesson. So then look at the take home activity sheet. From the CD, you're going to need to present, to print that launching letters folder game. The photo name puzzles. And maybe you're going to say that first week. In fact, I would recommend just do the launching letters folder game. It's way too much to try and have parents prepare two take home activities that night. Then there's parent take home things. There's the parent tip cards. The first night has more parent tip cards than in the other night, because the first one is the table of contents. Those parent tip cards, if you print them out on, if you print four of them on an 8 by 11 piece of paper, maybe you can print them on card stock. Get some of those O-rings and then hole punch. Families can actually have a ring of them by the end of the program. That's a great thing to do, because those parent tip cards are great things to use with kids. That's something that you would want to print ahead of time and have ready for parents to take home. Sometimes we say, if you have enough funding in your district, get those O-rings, print the parent tip cards on card stock, and even ask your parents to have a notebook. But if you can at the very least, provide a pocket folder for all the gearing up information for parents to take home. So the kind of thing that this is for you as the parent educator is, this is what you will need for each session. So you did see earlier a handout for parents to take home of what to expect in gearing up for kindergarten. If you look at the next slide, this is another handout, and you may or may not send this one home. But it talks about what should children be able to do, tell other people his name, say the correct address and phone number. I don't know a lot of kindergartners that can do that, but is that something to work towards? Holding the book right side up and turning pages, using scissors, drawing. This one for me, if I had to be really honest, there's way too many things on the page, and I don't think people would read it. But would you want to extrapolate two or three and say, this is so important. I want you to know these are things that your child will be doing in kindergarten. That's a wonderfully important thing that you can say to parents. You do not have to print every handout. That gets to be, what do you want to use in your district? What do you want to use? What are you comfortable with at your school? As I said again, there's more things than you can possibly use. I do recommend the first week, maybe even the second week, using the ice breakers. They're great. I don't know that you'll want to use them every week with the short amount of time that we do have. So let's go to the next slide. These parent tip cards. So in the first week, there's actually like three or four of them because you're going to have the one that says what all the parent tip cards are, and then there's a few. But when these come home each week, help your child recognize and sound out words and letters while getting exercise. So maybe you're looking at words you'd see on a walk around your neighborhood. Well, I got to tell you in my grandchildren's neighborhood there's not a lot of signs, but we go around the house and we say, SOFA. S begins with S, and TABLE begins with T, and KITCHEN begins with K. And so we take a walk around the room. Really, what these are is inspiration for what you will see. And so that's a sample. I wanted you to see what a sample of a parent tip card looks like. Okay? Take-home activities. Going to the next slide. The take-home activities. They can be as simple as something like the praise pennies, this one. I'd put five coins or buttons or whatever in one of my pockets, and it's really about looking at positive feedback. Basically, if I put them in my right pocket and then I noticed that Jackson remembered to take his dishes to the sink after breakfast, I'd say, Jackson, way to go. Thanks for putting the dishes on the counter. That's so helpful. And I'm transferring a penny to my other pocket. Then I noticed that he does, he's playing with his sister and they're playing nicely. I'd say, Jackson and Lucy, you guys played so well together. That's so helpful to our family. The positive feedback, that motivates all of us, much better than the negative. What I've noticed is we always look at what people can do better, but we don't always look at what people are doing well. So this is a sample of a take-home activity. This is totally what I would do. It's also a later session. So now let's take a look at the next one. This is from the first session, and this is one I actually, so it's broken down. You'll see it tonight. This launching letter. So this game is a game to help children recognize the letters of the alphabet. So you take a look and you're going to print this. This is again on your CD, and you're going to print this. This would be the instructions for it. So it says you're going to need four pages of game pieces. You're going to need scissors, glue, a sturdy file folder. Let me tell you, file folders go for a lot of these activities for gearing up for kindergarten. A ziplock, markers, crayons, or colored pencils. So now you're looking at the directions. We're going to color and cut out the nine rocket ships. We're going to glue them in alphabetical order inside the file folder. Then we're going to color and cut out the game label and glue this to the folder. So as you look at this, Laura Knox did this one. She did such a great job. So I'm just going to walk you through it. Let's go to the next slide. So this is actually what your cover page is going to look like. This is launching letters. That's the game. If you look at launching letters, find the missing letter for each rocket. Place it in the empty space. So as you look there, those letters below, B, E, H, K, those are letters actually that you'll be cutting out. If you can do these on card stock, that is fantastic. So if you look at it, the letters you'll be cutting out, you'll also be cutting out the directions. And you'll be cutting out the thing that says launching letters. Let's go to the next slide. Inside, you'll see rocket ships. And there are nine of them. You'll be cutting out the rocket ships. So you can see as the parent educator, you're going to want one thing for sure. You're going to want a sample. And then two, you're going to want to make sure you have enough scissors for everybody. Or in your instructions to family, ask them to bring scissors. Maybe they can leave them there for the week and you label them. And then you're the one that brings them back to class. Because they're going to have to cut things out every week, you're going to want to provide the markers for families and the glue. But scissors tends to be a thing that's hard to come across. If you have enough in your school, great for parents. But if you don't have enough, make sure that you have parents bring them. Because you've got to cut out the instructions from the last page. You're going to be cutting out these nine rockets. And in the end, it's going to look like this. So go back to that first page if you remember. This was the cover. So this cover was colored. And that's the front. So this is our launching letters game in the file folder. I open it up. There's my rockets. My rockets have been cut out and they have been colored. This is really important that you get through this the first night, even if you're rushing parents a little bit. Because they get used to it in procedure and routine. So this is entirely why I would do one activity rather than two that first night. So while you're talking about what to expect in kindergarten, the first night you're not going to get as far as you will the other night because they're going to be concentrating on this take-home activity. Trust me, there's a reason for this because as you get through this take-home activity, kids are going to be asking mom and dad, not the first week, but they're certainly going to be asking by the second or third week, what is it that we get to bring home this time? What do we get to do at home this week? Part of the cool part of this parent session is that you're really emphasizing, here's what we did here tonight. Here's how you can carry this out during the week because parents are educators every day in every way for their children. So this bio-folder game, parents are going to open up and those letters that you cut out, flip to the next slide, they're actually on the back. They're in a zip lock, they're in the back and so I'm going back again. When you get those letters, obviously the B is going to go between the A and the C, the E is going to go between the D and the F. That's helping children with letter recognition and so as a parent educator, you're going to have one that's ready and you're going to say, here's the A, here's where's the B, we put it in, here's the C, just helping kids recognize what the letter looks like. Well this game is useful for what the letter looks like but it's also useful once they figure out what the letter looks like for what does the letter sound like? So this launching letters game, the really cool part about that is once you're done and your child has mastered what is the letter look like, what does the letter sound like, you could take this game in the car and you can play it with your other kids too or you draw a letter from the zip lock, T, let's find all the T's we can as we're traveling on the road. Maybe it's in a billboard, maybe it's at a restaurant, maybe it's on a car passing us. So these games are games that families can keep and have and trust me the kiddos will be asking for the game so every week there's something that families get to do at home. Some weeks you'll just get one, some weeks you'll do two, if you just do one that's fine but it's still 16 things, or excuse me, 10 things they didn't have before they started this program. So I just love that about the program, the take home piece. As the parent educator, you really have to be on top of things and be intentional for that to happen. Alright, so when the parent session, second week, and I just say, please do this the second week, not the first week, we've got some program evaluation. Your dollars are tied to the program evaluation so you want to be sure and do them. They're not hard. The evaluations, especially Audrey for you because I know you've been here before, now it has changed a little bit. There is a pre and a post child assessment. That is going to happen in the classroom. Parent educator, I hope you're there to help the classroom teacher but make it a center the second week of gearing up for kindergarten. And excuse me, we're going to go through it in just a minute here. But make it a center for the parents and the children the second week of gearing up for kindergarten. The parent assessment, the TPASR is only done once at the end and I would totally say do a week nine because if you miss somebody week nine, they can at least do it week 10. That is a lengthy assessment and sometimes parents will have questions that's okay. We tell parents to just give us your best answer off the top of your head but it's your perception of your child's school readiness. So let's go forward and take a look. These are the instructions. It looks like a lot and we're here to answer any questions for you. But you take a look at it and it says, okay, here's what you're going to get in your packet. You're going to get an attendant sheet, a parent child score sheet and it's stapled together. So there's an assessment sheet and a score sheet. And then the parent assessment for school readiness forms and ID labels. We want to make sure that you have 001, okay, that's the first child and we want to make sure we've corresponded the correct parent with the correct child. So as you look at that, there's instructions on the gearing up for kindergarten website but the bottom line is on the attendant sheet if Mary Jones is 01, Mary Jones is 01 in the gearing up for kindergarten parent child assessment and she's 01 in the parent assessment. So we are sending you, I believe, the parent assessments at the beginning and so you'll have 01 and you'll know that that's Mary Jones. That's the kind of stuff that we really want to keep straight. I find it a little bit tough to do because we don't use it that often. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to give us a call. But those ID labels are really valuable. So you've got it on the parent sheet or excuse me, on the attendant sheet. You've got it on the parent child score sheet and the thing about that parent child score sheet, you've got two of them. You've got one for the pre, one for the post and then the parent assessment, you only have one and that comes at the end. So all four sets of labels have a spot to belong. Okay, so let's go to our next slide. Our next slide is, here's what our attendant sheet looks like. Okay, we're going to be sending that to you. So if you look where it says ID 001 or even if it's 001 typically is the first person, but let's just say you gave people labels, as long as you've got Mary Jones all the way through, we're happy. Now, we've got the sessions that they attended. We've got the sessions they attended and then for you to just check off. They did the parent child assessment the first time. Then we're good to go. Parent child assessment at the end and parent assessment at the end would also be about the same time. It says last session. I totally recommend sessions two and nine. As I said, if you miss somebody on session nine, you got them on session 10. If you do the parent, or the children's assessment on session two and you miss a family, they can do it session three. That's not a problem. We talked to Dr. Brotherson and he said that is not a problem. So just making sure that 001 is Mary Jones and her child is Johnny and Johnny, here's the sessions they attended and then across the parent child assessment that we completed them and we completed the parent assessment. This to me is not hard, but it's confusing because we don't do it that often. So don't hesitate to call us. We're happy to answer any questions you have or clarify. Questions now. All right, let's go to the next piece. This is what the parent child assessment sheet looks like that you're going to show to the child, that the parents are going to show to the child. So if you look at that, the first thing you're just going to say to the children, a mom and a dad is just going to point to the shape and let your child name it. If your child names it correctly, we're pointing to the square and they name it square. Triangle, they name it. Circle, they name it. But they get to rectangle and they can't name it. You're going to put an X through it on the score sheet. So the next sheet that is on your slides and you'll see it there is the score sheet. I want you to stay on the child assessment sheet first though. Please have a piece of paper to cover over this for parents so that the first thing the children are looking at is just the shape, then the colors, then the number identification. There's a lot of information on one sheet and I feel like I wish I could have a different way for that to be looked at. I don't. But at least not having so much information there for the children. So please cover just the shape, or have just the shape showing, then just the colors, then just the numbers, then just the letters. So if you go to the next sheet, the parent says, it says parent child score sheet. So you know that's the right sheet. So on that sheet you've got the parent's name, the child ID number, that's where that label goes. That's where that label goes. And then you just show to parents. We go to colors. And she knows all the colors except for green. You put an X through green. That score sheet is the one that we get. And you can send it at the end if you feel comfortable that I have these in a nice safe spot and I have them all together, or you can mail them right away and Divya will post them. And that's one last thing for you to mail at the end. It's up to you. It is good to let us know. I'm keeping the evaluation sheets. I'll send the pre and the post together. But that's what the children's sheet looks like. And so parents send that score sheet in and we're good to go. That's pre and post, as I said. Parents do it with their children. Parent educator, I totally want you in there supporting the classroom teacher on that night just because I know there's a lot going on. And if parents are confused, we don't want them to stay confused. We want to help them. We don't care if kids get everyone right. We just want to say to parents, all we want to know is what they know because this tells us, this drives how we can teach your children. So the parent-child score sheet is both pre and post. Going to the next one, practical parent assessment for school readiness. That's post only. You're going to have the parents' name and then you're going to have that ID number on there as well and you're just going to pop that on there. And then the parents are going to fill this out. This one really is just about my child. They explore the environment and participate in new opportunities. If you notice, this assessment is called the retro assessment because what they're doing is they're saying, before this program, maybe they did it once in a while. Now after the program, they almost always do that. We want parents to give their honest response, their first response. We don't want them overthinking this. But this sheet here we say to parents, so this is a retroactive assessment. What we're looking at is before the program started, how did I view my child? Now that my child is participated in this program, how do I view where they are in this place? This is a little bit longer assessment, as I said, but this assessment is something that's really valuable for us in helping our families, helping us know, excuse me, how our families view this school readiness piece. All right? So pre and post for the children's assessment, post for the parent's assessment. And believe me, if you're not starting this program till January and you look at this again and you have questions, call me. Absolutely call me or go on our website too and say, hey, okay, I need to look at those instructions because there are evaluation instructions on there. I know this is a quick overview of that, but I still want you to know what it is and what it looks like and that is there. Okay, next thing. Because we went back and we gave you the 10-week greeting list out of the 16 weeks. If you're saying to yourself, oh my goodness, but how do I remember what lessons to use? That's why I printed this up for you. I wanted you to know what to expect as lesson one. Brain development is lesson two. Raising a reader is lesson three. You'll go right through and you'll see all 10 of them. I would highly encourage you to print those out just so you know what ones you'll be doing. Totally, as I said before, you are more than welcome, and I do mean that, to use a different lesson. You don't have to use the ones we said. All 16 of these are great lessons, but we want you to be able to, if you want to use one that we didn't pick, go for it and use it. But these are the 10. That way it drives, okay, here's where I am this week. Here's where I'm going next week. We went through this in record time because the next piece is questions. Are there questions? Does anybody have questions? If you don't have questions, I'm going to stay on for a few minutes anyway in case you do. My next slide has my contact information on it, and it also has my phone number and my email. Don't hesitate to give me a call. I just really support what you do, and I'm honored to work with you, and I just thank you. So, have a great evening. I'll hang on for a few minutes if you do have some questions. Thanks so much, everybody. Good night. Other questions from people? I answered your questions and I may have shut them off, so I'm going to say it again. Vicki, change things up. If you have a small class with only eight kids, absolutely feel free to change things up again. And for those, I think you're a question too, Peggy. Absolutely. You can move us, you know, not have one of the centers or you can add that as an extra center. The pre and post evaluations don't take long, but they do take a few minutes. I'd say less than 10 minutes, but you absolutely can feel free to have one less center that evening. That's not a problem. Oh, Vicki, I'm looking forward to it too. Amanda, thank you. And don't hesitate to call me too. That's really important. I want you guys to be able to feel free to call me because, you know, not every question could certainly come up tonight. Oh, Peggy, thank you. I love this program, and actually what I love the most is working with teachers. Chelsea, do you have any questions? Scott, I think we're signing off. I think everybody's, Chelsea may have left the room for a minute to get something or whatever. Scott, I'm going to sign off. Thank you for your help. I so appreciate it. And have a great evening.