LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- For more than two decades, Jefferson County Public Schools has offered a summer program aimed at helping students preparing to enter kindergarten.
"School will be here before we know it. We need to get our kids excited and ready for this fall," said Rina Gratz, executive director of JCPS Early Childhood Programs. "This camp is intended and designed to help students retain what they know or get ready -- learn the skills that they need to get ready for kindergarten."
This current iteration of the program is called Ready4K. It has a superhero-themed curriculum that's focused on teaching the basic skills they will need when they start school in the fall and also make learning fun, which can help ease some of the fears new students face when moving to the structured school environment.
"They do a lot of small group interactive things that really address the basic skills, like, for example, knowing their first and last names, knowing, of course, their letters, their numbers, their shapes," Gratz said. "Those skills are markers that will tell us that they're ready to learn and grow in kindergarten."
Parents like Natalie Buckley are giving the camp a big thumbs-up.
"I think it's very important," Buckley said. "So my son, he has some developmental delays, but I think having a program like this that is intensive and structured and really focused on what they need to know going into kindergarten is super-helpful so that he is as prepared as possible as he goes into kindergarten and kind of makes that transition."
She said the camp helps keep her son academically active at a time when many aren't focused on schoolwork.
"Over the summer we maybe haven't been as diligent about working every day with doing that, and so having him in camp for kids, already I'm seeing him get better at writing his name and kind of being more prepared and spelling it correctly," she said.
She also encouraged others to enroll their kids in future camps.
"Whether your kid is fully prepared, or whether they have a little bit of delays or needs, I think the program can do nothing but help support them and help them be as ready as possible," she said.
Close to 1,800 students are participating in the two-week camps. There was one in June and the current one in July. They also partnered with Fund for the Arts to offer a cultural passport program to camp participants, along with TARC passes for families to visit some of the experiences at locations around the community.
"Having kids like school -- having them know that school is fun and it is also something that will make them feel good and ready to learn -- is absolutely one of the most important things that we can instill in our youngest learners," said Gratz.
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