September 29, 2019–12:50 a.m.
NEWS RELEASE
Floyd County Schools (FCS) is teaming up with its primary and elementary schools to provide monthly parent/child literacy workshops geared towards preschool students. Based on research by a collaboration of Georgia health and wellness organizations, the primary focus of this series of workshops is to give parents in the community a chance to participate in fun, engaging activities designed to help increase vocabulary by the time their child reaches kindergarten.
When projecting student success, research points directly to a strong early vocabulary in being a key factor in helping children learn to follow instructions, interact in the classroom, and ultimately learn to read. Students who have successfully learned to read by the end of third grade are four times more likely to graduate from high school. With this data in mind, the FCS Preschool Literacy Workshop Series, funded by the L4-GA grant, aims to help parents increase their preschoolers’ vocabularies with educational, hands-on activities done together.
The series began last school year with a number of workshops for both parents and children, ranging from presentations on language nutrition by the Department of Public Health to a science activity workshop led by Roy Mitchell, the FCS Science Specialist at the time. Activities continued throughout the summer, working with the YMCA Kindercamp, Restoration Rome, the Armuchee Swan Lake Chapel community, and Kids World and Superkids Early Learning Centers.
On Thursday evening, the workshop series began for the 2019-2020 school year at Model Elementary School, with FCS Math Specialist Jennifer White leading a group of two to five year-olds in the basics of math vocabulary. Preschool math games focused on counting and recognizing values of numbers in multiple formats including pictures, words, and numerals. Families used hands-on strategies with five frames and ten frames in a game-based format. Linking cube activities were featured to build different quantities and to compare values in terms of “more than” or “less than” and “how many more” or “how many less”.
After enjoying workshop games with their parents or caregivers, dinner was provided, and each child was given a Math Fun Pack to take home. Sandy Cook, who brought her daughter Raelynn to the event, said “It was a perfect class, very knowledgeable and fun. We enjoyed it! We will learn a lot from this package.”
The next workshop in the series will be announced on the Floyd County Schools website and Facebook page in the coming weeks.
See photos from all of the preschool literacy workshops HERE.