It is through our valued partnership with the Allen, Logan, and Simpson Regional Collaborative that we, the Logan County Cooperative Extension Service, seek to improve school readiness in Logan County by educating, encouraging, and engaging families. Kindergarten readiness means that each child enters school ready to engage in and benefit from early learning experiences that best promote the child’s success. The kindergarten screener measures readiness in five important domains, academic/cognitive, language development, physical development, self-help, and social-emotional. According to the 2023 Early Childhood Profile, only 35.8% of Logan County children are ready to enter kindergarten. 

To address our school readiness areas of concern, the Logan County Cooperative Extension Service in cooperation with our community partners, provided several opportunities for preschool aged children and parents to receive materials and incentives to best prepare for school in Logan County.  We provided two events, "Preschool Pumpkin Days" and "Preschool Spring Fling", provided events at six elementary schools in the county and provided transition kits for preschool children getting ready to enter kindergarten. 

This county-wide initiative was facilitated by the Logan County Extension Agents in Family Consumer Sciences, 4-H and Youth Development and Agriculture as well as the Logan County SNAP-Ed Assistant. Other key community partners that were instrumental in making these events happen were family resource directors from all of the Logan County Schools and Stevenson Elementary School, the Logan County Library, the Logan County Health Department, and the Logan County Schools preschool teachers.  We hosted two drive through events that provided 157 children with resources to address the areas of healthy eating, literacy, physical activity, self help skills, gross and fine motor skills and social skills. In addition to the resources for children, 146 parents were provided information on school readiness as well as training components for each resource included in the goodie bag on how items could be used to teach and reinforce school readiness skills.   Each station of the drive through event focused on one or more of the school readiness skills for Kentucky. Alongside the drive through portion of the event, an in person activity was also offered allowing each child the opportunity to sample a healthy snack option as well as participate in a hand on fine motor skill activity.  In addition to these activities, we hosted an event at each elementary school in Logan County for preschool children and parents focusing on the same objectives.  These events reached a total of 113 preschool youth and 93 parents.  Lastly, we provided 380 transition kits for preschool children entering kindergarten in Logan County in hopes to increase their school readiness skills.  According to a school readiness event survey, parents indicated that 77% of children were not quite ready for kindergarten. Our hope is that through these events and providing this education and these incentives that children and parents will be more prepared to start school.