It is through our valued partnership with the Allen, Logan, and Simpson Community Early Childhood Council 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 2020 Early Childhood Profile, only 43.2% 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 a school readiness event called “Preschool Pumpkin Days” for families of preschool aged children in Logan County.

This county-wide initiative was held at the Logan County Extension Office 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 this event 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.  Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we hosted a drive through event that provided 52 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, 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 while encouraging family development. Each station of the drive through event focused on one or more of the school readiness skills for Kentucky. 37% of parents who attended the event felt their child was not ready for kindergarten prior to attending the event, according to a school readiness survey. Through events like this, we hope to increase the number of children that will have the skills and confidence to succeed in kindergarten.