Staff writer
Next year’s crop of kindergartners got a taste of what school will be like during kindergarten round up Thursday at Marion Elementary School.
“We had 42 kids at round up this year,” teacher Lana Stevenson said. “Basically the day is just a mini kindergarten day. We have calendar time, read a story, make a little turtle, have recess and a snack, go ‘fishing’, learn, and sing a song. ”
Stevenson said that aside from meeting each other, the purpose of the round up is for future students to get a chance to see what kindergarten will be like.
“It also gives us a chance to see how kids function in a classroom setting and assess basic skills,” she said.
Activities included name writing and recognition, cutting, drawing shapes, color recognition, and counting using one to one correspondences up to ten.
“Some kids can count up to 10 but when you ask them to match the correct number with an amount of objects they get a little confused,” Stevenson said. “For example, they may have five blocks in front of them but say that there are seven.”
Activities were structured in such a way that students were not made aware of the fact that they were being evaluated for placement.
“It helps us when we are putting together the classes,” Stevenson said. “If there are students with high needs we try to even them out between each class.”
The only stipulation for a child to be accepted into kindergarten is that they have to be 5 years old by Sept. 1, she said.
Stevenson also noted a funny moment during the day.
“As a little boy in Katie Rahe’s class was working on his turtle, he kept stopping and putting his scissors down and exclaiming, ‘this is the best day of my life!’” Stevenson said. “We get that kind of stuff a lot, which is one of the reasons we love our jobs so much. You can’t get much better validation than that.”