Breaking News for the Future of Hawaii's Junior Kindergarten

It's amazing how I woke up this morning with the junior kindergarten program on my mind and this article had just been published only a few hours prior. I'm copying it in it's entirety from Hawaii 24/7 news site but the link I shared it with is also listed. 
Law Addresses Early Childhood Development 


MEDIA RELEASE A bill establishing the Executive Office of Early Learning (EOEL) was enacted Thursday by Gov. Neil Abercrombie. 


The measure, Senate Bill 2545, creates the EOEL with an appointed cabinet-level director who the governor named at the bill signing ceremony. Terry Lock, the current State Early Childhood Coordinator, will head the EOEL. 


“One of the goals of my administration was to ensure that there was a collaborative effort to see to it that every young child in Hawaii has access to high quality preschool,” Abercrombie said. “Investing in the next generation is the wisest decision that we can make as a people, and this measure makes such an investment.”


SB 2545 does the following: 
* Establishes the Executive Office on Early Learning 
* Establishes the Early Learning Advisory Board (ELAB) to replace the Early Learning Council 
* Repeals junior kindergarten programs at the end of the 2013-2014 school year 
* Requires that students, in order to enter kindergarten, be at least five years of age on July 31 of the same year (beginning with the 2014-2015 school year) 


With the signing of this bill, Hawaii joins the rest of the nation, where students start kindergarten at age 5. The bill also states that the EOEL will be responsible for developing an implementation plan for an early learning program, targeting late born five year olds and 4 year olds. 


The plan is due to the Legislature 20 days prior to the start of the 2013 legislative session. The vision is to have a universal network of child care and preschool support for every 4 year old in the state.


“The governor and the Legislature clearly recognizes that high quality early learning programs that are affordable and accessible for all children are critically important for ensuring the success of Hawaii’s keiki,” Lock said. “I look forward to continuing on the path that Governor Abercrombie has put forward in the expansion of a public-private comprehensive early childhood system for children.” 


One of the goals of EOEL is to ensure that government services among Departments of Health, Human Services, Education, Judiciary and other agencies are coordinated, well implemented, continuously improved, and consistently meeting needs. 


The ELAB, with five more members than the original 14-member Council, will advise the Office on how best to meet the educational and developmental needs of young children, prenatal to age 5, and how to improve the quality, availability, and coordination of early childhood programs. 


The successful passage of SB 2545 was largely due to the collaborative efforts between Senate Education Chair Jill Tokuda, House Education Chair Roy Takumi, the Governor’s Office, the Early Learning Council and many advocates. 


The governor used SB 2545 as the vehicle to request start-up funding of $300,000 for this new EOEL. 


For the past year, Lock was the State Early Childhood Coordinator in the Office of the Governor. With more than 36 years of experience in field of early childhood education, she has taught in and managed early childhood programs serving prenatal to 8 years old; initiated parent support groups; taught courses at the university and community college levels; coordinated family literacy services for parents and their preschoolers; and has been an advocate for early childhood education at the county, state and national levels.


Lock served as the Maui County Early Childhood Resource Coordinator, a National Head Start Fellow, and as the Director of the Kamehameha Schools Community-Based Early Childhood Education Division. 


She has a bachelor’s degree in Human Development from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and a master’s degree in Human Development with specialization in Parent/Community Work and Early Childhood Education from Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena, Calif.

Yikes, What is This???

We're getting a little messy today. I am at least! I know you may be wondering what exactly is this? Doesn't look too appetizing does it? Well, it's not really unless you are into excess salt. It's.....

Play dough!  I am making it for our next class! Sea salt play dough to be exact. Before you ask, no I did not set out to make sea salt play dough. ;D  It was an accident, well not completely. I wanted to make the play dough but did not want to use all of my table or kosher salt to do so. I also had an enormous amount of Hawaiian sea salt that I have not used in months except to make kalua pork, so I figured it couldn't be any harder than kosher salt to blend in right? Wrong! After I finished cooking the dough, I noticed that it had a rock salt texture to it. While I don't particularly like it I thought the kids might really enjoy it during their fine motor activities!    

Interested in the recipe?

I got my play dough recipe from www.playdoughrecipe.org  Here is something else I did; I added a packet of invisible watermelon and kiwi kool-aid to the mixture to make it scented. Enjoy! I know we will!

Our Day with The Coach!

Ever wondered what happens in our sessions? Well, here is a sneak peek at just a few of the skills and concepts we work on throughout our day with The Kindergarten Coach.


We begin our day with a short meet and greet followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, Hawai'i Pono'ī, calendar math activities, the weather and an introduction of the day's activities.

Most days there is a topic we focus on. This one is introducing turkeys!

After our topic is introduced and we move on to our activities for the day. We divide them up into three main areas: Language and Literacy:

We work on both uppercase

and lowercase letters!

We also ask lots of probing questions like:

and:

Math and Science 

There is always lots of counting! Here we are also measuring.

We learn about geometric shapes and how we can use them to build really cool things.

We love to experiment and make predictions. Do you know what color it will be after we mix them?

Sometimes we just observe ongoing projects and record them in our science journal.

Art and Fine Motor

We love to paint.  A real work of art!

Sometimes we make art with our names. This skill also helped with fine motor and math since we had to tear the paper and count the letters in our names!

Our art knows no bounds and here we were able to work on patterns with our rainbow fish.

By the end of the day we have a review of what we've learned and before you know it, it's time to go!

See you next time!