S-E prepares bags to help children prepare for school

SHERBURNE – In order to give children a jump start on some of the skills they need to be successful in the class room, teachers in the Sherburne-Earlville School District have put together literacy bags that will be distributed to the incoming kindergartners and pre-kindergarten age students in the district.

The literacy bags were first discussed by four teachers in the school who wanted to have an alternative evaluation. Barbara Colf, Jen Moore, Kathy O’Connor and Sue Dreyer decided to put together materials and items that could help students prepare for their first years of school.

“When we screened the children, we found a lot of them didn’t know how to handle scissors,” Dreyer said as an example, so the teachers decided to include safety scissors in the bags. The bags were handed out before the beginning of the 2007/2008 school year, after the teachers received donations from area businesses. While Dreyer admitted it is difficult to determine how much of an impact the materials in the bags had on the students, she said any experience with the materials is a good thing.

Dreyer explained that the literacy bags are useful because as state standards are raised, children are required to learn more and more at a younger age. “The bar for what a kindergarten child is expected to do has been raised. Kindergarten is more academic now. So it’s good if a child has more exposure to coloring and cutting and playing and developing fine motor skills ahead of time,” Dreyer said.