The Kindergarten Assessment can be scary. Imagine being four years old, sitting in an adult chair and having a stranger ask you fifty questions. Oh, and your parent(s) are required to wait in the parking lot! Welcome to school, right?
ApSeed is going the extra mile to help each child prepare for this educational gauntlet. We have made three major enhancements to the ApSeed approach, led by Dr. Julie Morrow.
One: We now provide families with a Readiness Kit. This kit provides teaching supplies focused on areas NOT covered by the Seedling touchpad. The Seedling teaches letters, numbers, shapes and colors. The Kit teaches body parts, objects, building blocks, scissor usage and other functions. With the Seedling and the kit, we greatly improve the child’s readiness. Hooray.
Two: Readiness Tutors. We have added “feet on the street” resources to promote learning. Our Tutors work about twenty hours a week and visit locations using the ApSeed model. They provide extra eyes and hands for teachers, administrators, and the children. Be on the lookout for pop-up tutorial sites where tutors will be available for coaching, evaluating, and supporting families.
Three: Continuous contact with parents. We are starting a texting schedule to send links of helpful hints from our website. Each text will highlight a specific activity with the entire directory of ideas behind it. Think custom YouTube with proactive notifications.
KaBoom! Three steps forward, NO steps back. These strong enhancements to our model are designed to build more knowledge and more confidence for the child. “Bring it on, stranger!” That’s what we want our ApSeed children to say.
Our public and private funding sources are making these enhancements possible. We are now in a full court press in expanding funding and our footprint. Watch our website over the next month or so. We are updating our pages to be more informative for parents and funding partners.
Stay tuned for our next update. We are in a hurry!!
