The Pinal Early Childhood Coalition, which is led by First Things First and made of dozens of early childhood partners across Pinal County, has a mission that all the county\u2019s children are prepared for kindergarten.<\/p>\n
The coalition members have put together a set of kindergarten readiness flyers with simple and fun ways families can help get their children ready for kindergarten. The flyers, which are divided into age groups from birth to age 5, are set to be distributed in the next few weeks throughout the county\u2019s 5,374 square miles.<\/p>\n
And if the child isn\u2019t old enough to start school? Well, It\u2019s never too early to start the prep.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur thoughts are to reach places with the information that is not typical to find family support,\u201d said Jessica Morehead, a community engagement specialist with Child Care Resource and Referral and a coalition member. \u201cPlaces that you don\u2019t think, \u2018this is a good place to find something to help my children here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, Morehead approached local grocery stores to see if there was a place to distribute the family flyers. Others approached food banks and doctors\u2019 offices.<\/p>\n
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, kindergarten readiness was on the coalition\u2019s list of priorities, but the overall shift to more young children staying at home during the pandemic prompted a new approach, Devinny said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a whole group of children that might not have had a quality early learning environment in the last two years because they were pulled out of child care due to the pandemic,\u201d Devinny said. \u201cWe know that those children are going to show up to kindergarten with very few skills, especially the social-emotional skills of interacting with other children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morehead said she has firsthand experience, since she had a young child when the COVID-19 pandemic started.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t put my baby in child care because there was no option for him to be in child care when the pandemic began,\u201d Morehead said. \u201cI kept him home. You could see when he went back to school he had a very hard time. He cried for weeks and weeks. Not only are children who are entering kindergarten affected by their emotions, but they are becoming very sheltered and not wanting to leave their parents.\u201d<\/p>\n
She points to anecdotal data of young children struggling with separation anxiety, having a hard time interacting with other children and having smaller vocabularies compared to the same-age children before the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are now starting to recognize that early childhood education is critical for children,\u201d Morehead said. \u201cWe are seeing how families are being affected by not having child care and going into kindergarten and not being prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n
The flyers will help parents address different areas of development, such as literacy, gross and fine motor and social and emotional skills.<\/p>\n
David Sherwood is a program supervisor with the Smart Support program and a coalition member. He leads a team that works with preschools to provide early childhood mental health consultation, which\u00a0is designed to help adults identify and address the mental health struggles or challenges of individual children that they work with in child care, preschool or other group settings.<\/p>\n
He said he hears from the teachers that he works with that they are getting more children who don\u2019t have the social and emotional skills needed to be ready for kindergarten.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe flyers will help the preschools provide some free and easily digestible activities and materials to the parents,\u201d Sherwood said.<\/p>\n
Each flyer provides parents with an activity that they can do at home with materials they have on hand. For example, one activity might ask parents to make a bean bag out of an old sock and some beans to toss back and forth with their child to develop gross motor skills. There are also links for free printable games to help children learn to play with others.<\/p>\n
The kindergarten readiness project is one of many that the Pinal Early Childhood Coalition has worked on over the course of a decade. The coalition was formed in 2011 at the FTF Pinal Regional Council\u2019s direction. Devinny said she estimates over the past decade that at least 40 different agencies have been part of the coalition.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have many system partners that might not have anything to do with early childhood directly, but they come to the table,\u201d Devinny said. \u201cWe have behavioral health entities, birthing hospitals, school districts. It helps because new people get to learn what is available in Pinal County.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many members comment that Devinny\u2019s leadership has helped drive the group\u2019s success in areas such as creating a resource guide of services available throughout the county and an annual slew of activities during Week of the Young Child.<\/p>\n
\u201cKatrina has done an excellent job at facilitating these long-term relationships to keep us on track,\u201d Sherwood said. \u201cWe\u2019ve built these relationships with a core group of people. We are accustomed to how we work and we have many people who tend to step up and take on these tasks without prompting.\u201d<\/p>\n
It comes down to wanting what\u2019s best for Pinal families.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone in the coalition wants to support families in the best way they can,\u201d Morehead said. \u201cOur goals align, we communicate and we collaborate.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Pinal Early Childhood Coalition has a mission that all the county\u2019s children are prepared for kindergarten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":42736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[169,433],"class_list":["post-42735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-pinal","tag-kindergarten-readiness","regions-pinal"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n