My 11 year-old has an iTouch, which she graciously shares with her little sisters. Until recently, when one of my four year-olds would ask, “Where is my iTouch?” I would shudder—how indulgent it sounded! I mean, a four year-old with an iTouch…how ostentatious! I would die if anyone ever heard her ask this question.

On the other hand, my four year-olds are avid fans of the iPhone (both my husband and I have one) and the iTouch, and the educational enrichment they have received from the variety of applications is hard to match. They love Math Magic and are able to do addition and subtraction facts up to 10. They love playing the matching game with letters and numbers. They love matching uppercase and lowercase letters. And together we enjoy DoodleBuddy, where a squiggle is given and the other person must turn it into something.

I am amazed at the creativity and the comprehension! And guess what? These benefits all come from free “apps”—just download and voila!

Comparable options include several “age appropriate” handheld electronic games, but they come at a high price and often require additional charges for each extra game cartridge, and the kids’ interest in any particular game is limited. Adding to the cost, the cartridges are only about an inch wide and tall, and are frequently “misplaced”—who needs one more thing to keep track of?

I’m now convinced that, comparing the options, I spend less on an iTouch. The initial cost may be higher, but in the long run, we have access to more apps, most of which are free or relatively inexpensive (an iTunes gift card can go pretty far in the apps department!). Plus, there are no extra cartridges to keep track of.

The multitude of experiences a child can have with an iTouch, both educational and recreational, far exceeds many other single-unit electronic toys and games. And the iTouch can grow with the child rather than being limited to a narrow age range. It requires no additional fees in AAA batteries, either; plug it in and let it charge!

Apple’s iTouch offers great exposure for the technological future that awaits our children! At least, this seems to be a recurring theme in conversations lately, and I think I have changed my attitude from shuttering at the thought of a four year old with an iTouch to a feeling of wise revelation on the part of the parent and embracing a high tech toddler in training!

When talking about Pre K Scholars, many moms ask me, “How old does my child have to be to do this program?”

The short answer is that the Pre K Scholars curriculum primarily serves children who will be entering kindergarten the following fall, so I encourage moms to look at our program as a kindergarten preparedness course, rather than one that is age-specific.

Leveling the Playing Field

Pre K Scholars was developed to help bridge the gaps found in the kindergarten classroom. Our curriculum provides supplemental enrichment to the child, which allows developmental preschools to remain developmental and academic preschools to remain academic. We reinforce the basic skills needed to face the more rigorous—and complex—kindergarten of today.

The Preschool Environment

Using our home state as an example, California currently has no state standards for preschool curriculum. As a result, some children attend developmental preschools, while others attend more academic preschools; certainly, their backgrounds will be different when they enter kindergarten.

Beyond types of preschools, a child’s birth date is a factor: the cut off date for California kindergarten is December 1. A popular trend seems to be holding kids back for a “bonus year”—either because of maturity or for sports performance (this trend is found more commonly among boys). Because of this, it’s not unusual for kindergarten teachers to lead classes of six year old boys and four year old girls, some with developmental preschool experiences and some with more academic experiences.

Consider the difficulty these teachers face with such educational and developmental diversity!

If you’re a kindergarten teacher, or the mother of a child that’s of kindergarten age, what challenges have you seen?

The excitement of a new school year brings the joy of clean backpacks—organized with sharpened pencils and unblemished erasers—new outfits to be worn on the first day, reuniting with friends not seen over the summer and finding out the answer to the question that peeked their curiosity all summer: “Who is my teacher going to be?”

With the excitement of all of those things, though, comes the impact that recent budget cuts have had on our public school system. Many teachers are not returning to their classrooms; with these cuts we will see larger class sizes, fewer teachers and teachers’ aides, fewer support positions and cuts in art and music. My girls brought home supply lists for their classes listing both personal supplies, and community supplies that are to be purchased by parents the first week of school. Although this isn’t unusual, the list this year seems to have grown bigger, and our receipt from the school supply store was higher than in years past.

The reality is that the state of California has a $26 billion deficit and is projected to cut an estimated $6 billion from public education. School districts are considering cutting costs by eliminating kindergarten altogether since it is not mandated by the state. What What impact will this have on our children? With all of the cuts in education it is more important than ever before, that our kids are ready and prepared for school.

So, how are you preparing your children?

Read: State tweaking testing of VPK students

Before Pre K Scholars was started, I didn’t even know what a tagline was. You can imagine my perplexity when I was asked to try and come up with one…I first had to understand its purpose. By definition, a tagline is a reiterated phrase identified with an individual, group or product: a slogan.

But it’s not that simple—there are rules as to what makes a particular tagline better than others. In digging deeper I learned that a really good tagline conveys a company’s benefit with personality and attitude; a good tagline is memorable and a tagline should be kept as short as possible. With those criteria in mind, we set off to find a tagline for our Kindergarten Preparation Program, and came up with several:

• “we prepare children for kindergarten”
• “we make learning fun for all”

Words and phrases like “creative,” “integrated,” and “make school seem like play” were all tossed around…but not quite what we were looking for.

Let’s switch gears for a moment; there is a shift happening in education. We are realizing that education needs to promote more than mere linear thinking—we need to promote critical thinking, we need our children of today to be creative problem solvers. One YouTube video states, “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist and that we need to be preparing them for problems that we don’t even know yet exist.” These are loaded statements, but it is clear that our children need to have an education that will prepare them for what life will hold in this century. They need a curriculum that is flexible, creative, challenging and complex. They need an education that will address the whole child. One that is interdisciplinary and integrated rather than linear and compartmentalized. An education that is limitless in inquiry.

We feel our company shares these same values in the latest trends in education. We aim to lay the foundation for creative problem solving, the promotion of higher levels of thinking and integrating the basic skills across the curriculum while keeping it creative and fun for so many preschoolers! This is an important selling point for us, but how do you sum all of that up into a concise tagline?

It wasn’t easy, but here’s what we came up with: Pre K Scholars: Preparing Children for 21st Century Learning

What do you think?

I am a huge fan of making everyday life experiences learning experiences. I think children are more inclined to learn concepts if they are witnessing them first hand. All of sudden I glanced over and saw exactly what my oldest was doing with my twin four year olds: she was providing them with a teachable moment.

At the time, my oldest daughter was about to turn eleven, and she is amazing with children. She was explaining to the twins that she would be turning eleven in a few days, and with that they gathered shells and placed them into the sand to make the number eleven. It then inspired a discussion that answered many questions: What does “11″ looks like? How much is the number eleven? What number does eleven come after? Can you count to eleven?

With nothing but our natural surroundings I was so proud to see my daughter find a teachable moment—often those are the most enriching lessons. Now everywhere we go, each of my twins say to anyone they encounter, “My sister is eleven!”

The Pre K Scholars curriculum is based around two guiding education principles:

1. All students are capable of learning any concept or skill if it is appropriately presented.
2. Children learn by doing; so learning should be interactive, inventive and experiential.

This holds true with the introduction of vowels within our program. What do Addy the Acrobat, Eddie the Eraser, Iggy the Ice Cream Man, Otto the Oceanographer and Umberto the Umpire all have in common? They are all in a group called “Vowels” and they are considered the busiest members of Scholarville. This is because, 1) they all have two sounds and 2) are found most frequently in words (created by friendships within Scholarville).

To further reinforce the two sounds (long and short) of these special letters, the students are able to experience the differentiating sounds during the Guessing Game. In preparation for the Guessing Game, when a vowel is being featured, a ribbon is secured down the middle of the pocket chart to create two sides: one for beginning long vowel sounds and one for beginning short vowel sounds. After the student guesses the picture/word from the clues provided, he/she needs to decide whether the beginning sound is long or short and place the card accordingly.

The students love the extra challenge this provides and guess what? They are able to comprehend the concept of vowels!

Further reading:

• More about the Pre K Scholars program
• PKS Family Kit

I like to be the creative force within our company—but behind the scenes. The challenge I am facing, though, as others learns about Pre K Scholars, is that everyone wants to see the kits, experience the games and activities. Naturally, there are questions…who better to answer those questions than the creator. Right?

Well, I’m stepping out from behind the scenes and I am beginning to physically unveil our program to all who are interested. What I thought would be “out of my box” and feel “unnatural” has really turned out to be an exhilarating experience.

Two days this week I set up a product display table at a prestigious local preschool that will be offering the Pre K Scholars program as an afterschool enrichment starting in the fall. I was able to show off the Scholarville map, the Scholarville characters, the guessing game, the kit box, the sample lessons. And I answered a common question: “How are you different?”

This I can answer so proudly! A few examples of my responses:

• Most programs are strictly phonics based, but we offer so much more—we are comprehensive, integrated. We reinforce fine motor skills, letter/sound recognition, basic reading skills, handwriting, basic math, simple science and so much more.
• Our program is centered around a town called Scholarville, filled with a diverse group of characters from all nationalities.
• Our Guessing Game introduces vocabulary with presenting clues to the children and requires them to utilize more processing, instead of just showing a pictured flash card. All the while, the program reinforces beginning sounds.

My answers go on and on, as does my pride in the quality of the pre k program we offer. At the end of my two days at the preschool, they had enough students to fill one class and enough on a waiting list to open a second class. I guess stepping “out of my box” isn’t so bad. Especially if it can benefit pre k children nationwide.

Look for our booth at the NAEYC conference in Washington D.C. this November.

I have a very talented friend who started her own “graphic design” business within the stationary world. I had pitched my concept to her about an Alphabet Community of Characters that would all be individuals with their own sound identity, but they would also form friendships with other members of the community and by “working together,” new sounds and/or words would be made. She was swamped with her newly developed business and she thought long and hard about who would be the perfect fit for the job of giving a visual identity to these 26 characters and the town in which they would live. Hence, my introduction to the talented Carson Abbert.

Carson is an Art Teacher in Portland, Oregon, so we were never able to meet face to face (this amazes me even more). We spoke several times on the phone and seemed to have a shared vision for the characters..they were to be multicultural, they were to show action, they were to be motivating, they were to be enticing and friendly and they were to translate well into the letter and the sound motion. Being an educator himself, he could appreciate their purpose and he set out to bring the characters to life. If you see the map of Scholarville, you will see that he successfully met all of our initial criteria and then some.

The children LOVE Scholarville and they, surprisingly, all have different favorites. I am so pleased to see how the characters, who only had a name, a motion and a nationality a year ago, have become so vivacious and instrumental in Reading Readiness. Carson and I have yet to meet face to face, but the connection we made has been a huge blessing in my life!

Magic can be created from the right connections, don’t you agree? Do we not always try to find the right connections for our children from the moment they are born – the right doctors, the best toys, the best peer groups, the right mom group, the right school, the proper extra curricular activities and the list goes on….

What happens if we just trust in letting it be?

Interested in starting your own home-based pre-K program? Our home-based business kit has everything you need, including the lesson in the post you just read. If you’re already using Pre K Scholars, share your success stories here.

I truly believe that if you expose youngsters to a multitude of skills, you will be amazed at what they are able to retain. For example, in class this week, we introduced the letter T and some different educational components that integrated in nicely, one being telling time.

I showed the kids a large instruction clock and led them on a discovery by asking them questions and provoking some exploration: What is this? What shape is it? How many numbers are on it? How many hands are on it? Are the hands the same size? What does a clock tell us?

I simply stated that the larger hand tells us how many minutes and the smaller hand tells us the hour. Furthermore, when the minute hand is straight up pointing to the twelve, we say, “o’clock.” With that, the students were given smaller instructional clocks and asked to show many different “o’clock” times (i.e., “Who can show me 6 o’clock?”).

They loved this game. They even asked if they could take the clocks home for the week. How could I say no to the eagerness to explore further? How else can we expose our kids to early education in a motivating way?

Interested in starting your own home-based pre-K program? Our home-based business kit has everything you need, including the lesson in the post you just read. If you’re already using Pre K Scholars, share your success stories here.