Summer School has already started for new Lakeville Kindergarten students, even before their first day of classes. Almost 30 new Kindergarten students, along with their parents, got a jump start on May 12, when they attended a workshop at Lakeville Elementary, called ‘Make It and Take It.?
The program, created by Kindergarten teacher Renee Green and Reading Specialist Colleen Kazor, featured 6 “stations” that students (and their parents) could visit. At each station, they received or learned how to make materials they could use during the summer to help them get ready for Kindergarten.
At the Nursery Rhyme Station, students met their new teacher, Mrs. Green, and a Kindergarten paraprofessional, Claudia Blasco. They learned how to make “props” to help retell nursery rhymes and act out stories. They left with a spider, a mouse, an egg, Humpty Dumpty and Little Bo Peep.
From there, they visited the Reading Station, where paraprofessionals Lori Smith and Nancy Maslowsky read them a story, “The Hungry Caterpillar,” and showed their parents six different activities that could be used to teach reading strategies with any book.
At the Math Station, tutorial assistant Sue Senyk taught the children math games that would help them learn numbers and concepts such as one-to-one correspondence.
At the Literacy Station, students made an ABC book, and reading specialist Michelle Mumbrue taught them how to find pictures in magazines that they could paste in their book on the corresponding letter page.
The children visited the Letters and Sounds Station, where reading specialist Colleen Kazor and paraprofessional Mary Murphy taught them how to make words with magnetic letters that they could put on their refrigerator. They learned how to find beginning and ending sounds, and to make their name from the letters.
At the Library Station, Lakeville Media Specialist Janet Pawelek read the children a story, and gave them a recommended reading list, along with several books from the list. Shea Smith, from the Oxford Public Library, was on hand to explain to the children how they could get a library card, and demonstrated some of the materials available at the library.
In addition to the stations, parents received information about developmental speech from Speech Pathologist Tammy Lester. The afternoon ended with the children taking their first bus ride (with mom or dad at their side), and learning bus safety rules and procedures from Miss Kelly, their bus driver.
The kids left with a goody bag filled with important treasures – pencils, crayons, markers, chalk, magnetic letters, books, games and lots of information for parents. For these students who haven’t even started school, they seemed delighted to get so much homework!