Pre K Scholars Kindergarten Readiness Kit DVD is a recipient of the prestigious Mom’s Choice Gold Award in the Educational Products Ages 3-6 category. Several years in development and thoroughly tested in both the classroom and home environment, the Kit’s preschool curriculum is also the winner of Creative Child Magazine’s 2011 Media of the Year Award. In addition, the company just released an iPhone app, Phonics Fun and Games, for independent use or in support the phonics-based portion of the curriculum.

El Dorado Hills, CA (PRWEB) October 27, 2011

The Mom’s Choice Awards has named the Pre K Scholars Kindergarten Readiness Kit a Gold Award winner. The phonics-based Kindergarten Readiness Kit was created by a former kindergarten teacher, Amy Schwary, to provide parents with an affordable, comprehensive, fun, easy to follow integrated program containing the essential elements of a kindergarten readiness curriculum, phonics, early reading, math, science, handwriting, language arts and fine motor skill development.

“We are so pleased to receive this prestigious award,” said Schwary. “The 22-week preschool curriculum works extremely well for both home schoolers and for preschools and contains hundreds of lessons and exercises that together meet or exceed state standards for kindergarten readiness. We have received many compliments from parents and teachers who are using our program but the Mom’s Choice Gold Award is special additional recognition.”

Priced at $39.95, the Pre K Scholars Kit also received Creative Child Magazine’s 2011 Media of the Year Award earlier this year.

The Mom’s Choice Awards® (MCA) is an awards program that recognizes authors, inventors, companies, parents and others for their efforts in creating quality family-friendly media, products and services. Parents, educators, librarians and retailers rely on MCA evaluations when selecting quality materials for children and families. The Mom’s Choice Awards® seal helps families and educators navigate the vast array of products and services and make informed decisions.

An esteemed panel of judges includes education, media and other experts as well as parents, children, librarians, performing artists, producers, medical and business professionals, authors, scientists and others. A sampling of their panel members includes: Dr. Twila C. Liggett, ten-time Emmy-winner, professor and founder of PBS’s Reading Rainbow; Julie Aigner-Clark, Creator of Baby Einstein and The Safe Side Project; Jodee Blanco, New York Times best-selling author, Priscilla Dunstan, creator of the Dunstan Baby Language; Patricia Rossi, host of NBC’s Manners Minute; Dr. Letitia S. Wright, D.C., host of the Wright Place™ TV Show; and Catherine Witcher, M.Ed., special needs expert and founder of Precision Education, Inc.

MCA judges are bound by a strict code of ethics which ensures expert and objective analysis free from any manufacturer association. The evaluation process uses a propriety methodology in which entries are scored on a number of elements including production quality, design, educational value, entertainment value, originality, appeal and cost.
To be considered for an award, each entrant submits five identical samples of a product. Entries are matched to judges in the MCA database. Judges perform a thorough analysis and submit a detailed assessment. Results are compiled and submitted to the MCA Executive Committee for final approval. The end result is a list of the best in family-friendly media, products and services that parents and educators can feel confident in using.

To learn more about Pre K Scholars visit http://www.prekscholars.com

About Pre K Scholars
Founded in 2008, Pre K Scholars was developed by Amy Schwary and Alan Pierrot, MD with a vision of providing affordable resources to parents, teachers and preschools to enhance the kindergarten readiness of the population.

Contact

• Alan Pierrot
  Pre K Scholars
  559-779-4541
  Email

• Amy Schwary
  Pre K Scholars
  877-850-3926
  Email

Attachments

Pre K Scholars, originator of the 2011 Media of the Year Award winning Kindergarten Readiness Kit DVD, is delighted to announce its first iPhone app, Phonics Fun and Games for 3-6 year olds. Priced at $3.99, the four-in-one app’s easy to use interface allows children to play all four games independent of parental oversight. Phonics Cards, uses the Kindergarten Readiness Kit’s popular animated multicultural Scholarville characters to introduce upper and lower case letters and sounds. Guessing Game, Trace & Learn, and Matching & Memory introduce preschoolers to the fun of learning while enhancing essential skills for kindergarten success, letter sound recognition, letter formation and handwriting, memory, thinking, visual and fine motor skills.

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“ C l a s s room research shows that, on the average, children who are
taught phonics get off to a better start in learning to read than children
who are not taught phonics.”
Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson

El Dorado Hills, CA (PRWEB) October 11, 2011

Pre K Scholars has released its first iPhone app, Phonics Fun and Games, based on the Scholarville characters in its award winning, phonics-based Kindergarten Readiness Kit.

“We are so pleased with our new four-in-one phonics-based app, Phonics Fun and Games,” said former kindergarten teacher and Pre K Scholars founder, Amy Schwary. “It is fun and easy for 3-6 year olds to master and works beautifully either freestanding or as a supplement to our Kindergarten Readiness Kit DVD. Parents and preschools can use the app to reinforce any phonics-based preschool curriculum or for independent study.” The Phonics Cards section of the app introduces upper and lowercase letters and sounds and responds to visual, auditory or kinesthetic learners. These concepts are then reinforced in the three fun games, Guessing Game, Trace & Learn, and Matching & Memory, that children can play on their own. The high repetition capacity of all the games is beneficial to all children and provides a particularly beneficial tool for those with learning disabilities such as Down’s syndrome and autism or ESL (English as Second Language) learners.

The Guessing Game section provides three clues to a place or thing that begins with the letter under study. There are 5 cards per letter for a total of 130. “The Guessing Game is a favorite of our preschool curriculum,” said Schwary, “so we simply had to include it. It reinforces beginning sounds and vocabulary development. We are unaware of any app with a similar game.”

Trace & Learn demonstrates proper upper and lower case letter formation by showing how letters are made. A child simply drags his/her finger along the letter connecting the green star to the red star thereby learning the fundamentals of letter formation and handwriting.

The final game, Matching and Memory, enhances memory, thinking and visual skills by flipping and matching upper and lower case cards. An infinite number of possibilities are included so a child will never see the same combination of upper and lower case letters twice. The prototypes were so well received by children that Schwary warns parents, “Just be ready. Your children will be forever pestering you for your phone.”

Pre K Scholars has released its first iPhone app, Phonics Fun and Games, based on the Scholarville characters in its award winning, phonics-based Kindergarten Readiness Kit.
Digital Attic developed the app in collaboration with Pre K Scholars. “We were hired by Pre K Scholars to adapt and animate their preschool curriculum to the DVD that was launched March 2011 and became sold on the program and its Scholarville characters,” said Digital Attic vice president, Troy Vasquez. “My wife is a school teacher and my daughter is four so I did not have to go far to test the app as we refined it. My daughter loves all four games and can play them all without any help from me, an important design requirement we had to meet for Pre K Scholars.”

Next for Pre K Scholars and Digital Attic are Phonics Fun and Games apps for the iPad and Android platforms.

To learn more about the Pre K Scholars preschool curriculum and approach to kindergarten readiness, visithttp://www.prekscholars.com. To learn more about custom website and mobile app development, visithttp://www.digitalattic.com

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Pre K Scholars is delighted to announce that its Kindergarten Readiness Kit won Creative Child Magazine’s 2011 Media of the Year Award in the Preschool Educational Classroom Products category. The Kit, developed by former kindergarten teacher, Amy Schwary, is a 22-week phonics-based preschool curriculum for home and preschool use.

Creative Child Magazine 2011 Media of the Year Award

Half of five-year-olds aren’t ready for kindergarten.

Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, May 29, 2011

El Dorado Hills, CA (PRWEB) July 26, 2011

The educators and parent judges in Creative Child Magazine’s Awards Program selected Pre K ScholarsKindergarten Readiness Kit winner of the 2011 Media of the Year Award in the Preschool Educational Products category. Only one product in each category is chosen. The program is unique in that the very people who purchase the products, early education professionals and moms, act as judges.

“We are thrilled to win this prestigious award,” said founder, Amy Schwary, the former kindergarten teacher who developed the program. “Pre K Scholars is committed to preparing 4-5 year olds for academic success by providing an affordable fun, comprehensive preschool curriculum that meets or exceeds state standards.”

The Kindergarten Readiness Kit was years in development by Schwary, mother of four girls. “When I was teaching I noted what studies have confirmed, that about half of all children entering kindergarten are not prepared, and this statistic runs across all socio-economic groups. “said Schwary. “Parents face a bewildering set of choices when they tackle kindergarten readiness for their children. They must decide what phonics, handwriting, math, early reading, science and fine motor skill resources to purchase and then face the challenge of how and when to introduce each topic. I designed the kit to solve those problems for parents.”

Schwary is convinced of the program’s effectiveness because she taught the material in her home-based preschool classes for many years, stopping classes only to develop the award-winning DVD. “If we are to improve kindergarten readiness in our country,” said Schwary, “we must provide parents with affordable, fun, easy to use yet comprehensive programs that use everyday household items, activities that parents and children look forward to rather than see as a chore. The Pre K Scholars Kindergarten Readiness Kit is just such a resource.”

To learn more about Pre K Scholars visit http://www.prekscholars.com

About Pre K Scholars
Founded in 2008, Pre K Scholars was developed by Amy Schwary and Alan Pierrot, MD with a vision of providing affordable resources to parents, teachers and preschools to enhance the kindergarten readiness of the population. The company is currently working on an iPhone and Android app to supplement it Kindergarten Readiness Kit DVD.

Contact

• Alan Pierrot
  Pre K Scholars
  559-779-4541
  Email

• Amy Schwary
  Pre K Scholars
  877-850-3926
  Email

Attachments

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• Pre K Scholars Kindergarten…

“Hello!  Before having 4 children, I was a high school English teacher.  I always say it was the best parenting course I could have ever taken!  In 2002 I left the classroom when my oldest child was born, but my passion for education and becoming my kids’ first teacher is a job I’ve relished ever since (though I definitely have my moments and I definitely need my breaks).

By 2008 I was a stay-at-home mom to four young children, and I would say being part of a mother’s club until then was another wonderful gift that I learned from tremendously.  But by the time my oldest child started school, I quit the group, thinking I didn’t have the time to go to playgroups and activities, that I’d still get together with the friends I’d made in the mother’s club.

But life gets busy- I found myself missing the conversations and camaraderie I had with other moms.

When I looked online, I either saw parenting sites devoted to celebrity moms and how they were fitting back into their size 0 jeans immediately after leaving the hospital after giving birth or there were many sites targeted towards moms of infants (I enjoyed both at times, but the first didn’t inspire, but depressed, me and the latter I felt like once the kids reached 3 or 4 I didn’t know where those moms went).

I’ve also found plenty of sites where moms are portrayed as frazzled, burned out shells of their former selves with banana in their hair (Ok, I am definitely like that some of the time, but I hope not all of the time!)

It seemed there w asn’t thoughtful content in one centralized place devoted to us, Kid Focused types, who still crave intellectual conversation.

I have been fortunate to be the family columnist for our area newspaper and a blogger for a regional magazine, but I’ve wanted to share even more content. Therefore Kid Focused was born in the spring of 2011.

I want to hear what you find fascinating, disturbing, inspiring, when it comes to all of the Kid Focused news and current events out there, too.

Browse the site; send us links to interesting Kid Focused news stories; pass along your videos of talented kids, your book recommendations, or favorite recipes.  Share your small Kid Focused business with the rest of us, too.

I look forward to hearing from you!”

Sincerely,

Julie Samrick

The curriculum used in her class derives from a program called Pre K Scholars (www.prekscholars.com) that was created by Amy Schwary a graduate from USC who majored in Education. Wanting to make sure her own child was well prepared for Kindergarten, Schwary created the Pre-K Scholar program. She then developed a user friendly, hands-on Pre-K kit for teachers/moms interested in implementing the Pre-K program with their own children and others in their home, church and community.

The guiding education principle for Pre-K Scholar which states that all students are capable of learning any concept or skill if appropriately presented is what attracted Amy Hunt to use the curriculum and open Miss Amy’s Pre-K Connection.

As a credentialed teacher who taught kindergarten, first and second grades prior to having her two sons, Hunt considered the home-based Pre-K program to be an ideal setting for someone with her teaching experience who desired the flexibility of being at home with her kids while working part time.

“This is not a preschool in the familiar sense with snacks and naps” Hunt said. “It is straight instruction with class sessions running 90-minutes per day.” She plans to offer two separate sessions on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 10–11:30am and 1–2:30pm.

Hunt is still accepting late sign-ups for her introductory eight-week summer session that began last Monday, June 8, while she also prepares for a fun, positive, comprehensive learning environment for this fall and spring 2010 students.

During the 90-minute sessions, students will review one of the 22 lesson plans developed around the letters of the alphabet, in addition to studying phonic flash cards, guessing games and learning vowels through Addy the Acrobat, Eddie the Eraser and Otto the Oceanographer.

Neuroscientist Eric Knudsen is noted as saying, “Early childhood provides a window of opportunity to dramatically shape a child’s brain when it is rapidly developing. Children who attended high-quality preschool do significantly better in K-12 than children who do not (due to the fact that) in early childhood, children develop the linguistic, cognitive, social and emotional building blocks for later development.”

For more information about Miss Amy’s Pre-K Connection here in Ripon, call her at (209) 253-0081 or (530) 391-4742. Her email address is amyhunt22@charter.net. Her website is www.prekconnection.com.

Mary was motivated by Pre K Scholars, noting that it connects with the Montessori philosophy and fills a void found by many Montessori teachers at this “pre-reading” level. She volunteered the following endorsement, encouraging all Montessori teachers to check out the Pre K Scholars program!