Introducing KITS - Kids in Transition to School Program

Remember when your baby went from bottles to sippy cups? Or from diapers to big kid underwear?  Transitions in your little one’s life can be hard, on both you and them. Parents seek guidance from trusted sources like friends, grandparents, pediatricians, even Google to help us through these adjustments.One of the biggest transitions of all is coming up for some kids this fall. Entering Kindergarten! For many of you the thought of putting your child on the school bus 4-5 days a week is overwhelming. But a program developed at Oregon Social Learning Center and available around our county this summer shows us there are ways we can get our kid and ourselves ready for this big change.

The Kids in Transition to School (KITS) Program

The Kids In Transition to School (KITS) Program is designed for you and your child to help prepare for the move to Kindergarten. This summer kids can attend this free program in 12 Lane County school districts. KITS is set up like a kindergarten class and boosts really important skills for school like literacy, self-regulation, and social skills. Current research tells us school readiness is important not only to academics, but also for good social skills and positive behaviors in school. We know that children who have the basic foundations of reading when they enter school are more likely to be reading on grade level by third grade. And children who have higher early numeracy skills are more likely to be performing more complex mathematics in third grade.In the KITS Program, children attend 2 sessions of school readiness groups a week for 8 weeks in the summer before the start of kindergarten and 1 session per week for 8 weeks after school starts.

Program Focus Areas

KITS teachers will help your child prepare for school by focusing on:

• Early literacy skills

Those basic foundations include: phonological awareness (rhyming), letter–sound knowledge, letter identification, and understanding of concepts about print (for example, that we read from left to right, where we start reading).

• Early numeracy

Recognizing and naming numbers, counting sequentially, making comparisons and ordering on number, size, shape, and color, and shape recognition.

• Self regulation

Skills such as sitting still and raising hands. Teachers love when kids can do these things!

• Social skills

Cooperation, sharing, recognizing others’ emotions. Classmates love when their peers do these things!

KITS Workshop Examples

The KITS Program knows you are your child’s first teacher. They will support you in this vital role by providing workshops weekly in the summer and every other week in the fall focusing on:

• Ways to increase early literacy skills at home.

• Preparing children for the transition to school by establishing routines.

• How to initiate home-school communication and school involvement.

• How to encourage children’s positive behaviors at home and school.

Schools make fitting a KITS group into your life as convenient as possible by offering:

• Transportation for children and parents (on parent group days) from your home to the KITS group site.

• Child care for siblings during the parent group meetings.

• Snacks during the school readiness, parent and child care groups.

KITS is Proven to Work

The KITS Program has been studied in schools all around our county and has shown positive effects on children and parents, in particular:

• Gains on early literacy (including letter naming abilities, letter-sound recognition, and understanding of conventions of print).

• Gains on self-regulation skills (including controlling behaviors and emotions) during the summer before kindergarten and better self-regulation out to the end of the kindergarten year. This means children may be better able to focus in the classroom and less likely to disrupt the class.

• Parents who had gone through the KITS Program felt that it had improved their abilities to prepare their children for school and had improved their abilities to increase their child’s positive behaviors.

KITS Locations

The following school districts are offering the KITS Program this summer:

• Bethel

• Creswell

• Crow-Applegate-Lorane

• Eugene 4J

• Fern Ridge

• Junction City

• Lowell

• Marcola

• McKenzie

• Siuslaw

• South Lane

• Springfield

We all want what’s best for our kids. And we all need a hand ourselves when facing big transitions.  This summer you and your child can get support as you make this big change, and have some fun, too!

Interested in KITS?

Reach out to your neighborhood school for more information and to sign up. You can also check out the KITS website http://kidsintransitiontoschool.org/  or call 541- 681-4206 to learn more about the program and sign up.