Presley Cross grazes the wing of a live monarch butterfly while Karen Albrecht, her teacher, holds it in Albrecht's classroom at the Janesville Community Day Care Center. The classroom is one of the Preschool 4 Janesville classrooms, a new program this year.
Daryen Young observes monarch butterflies in Karen Albrecht's classroom at the Janesville Community Day Care Center. The classroom is one of the Preschool 4 Janesville classrooms, a new program this year.
Karen Albrecht's classroom at the Janesville Community Day Care Center is one of the Preschool 4 Janesville classrooms, a new program this year.
Olivia Winzenz examines a sunflower in Karen Albrecht's classroom at the Janesville Community Day Care Center. The classroom is one of the Preschool 4 Janesville classrooms, a new program this year.
Walker Sweeney and Hunter Holeras count together in Karen Albrecht's classroom at the Janesville Community Day Care Center. The classroom is one of the Preschool 4 Janesville classrooms, a new program this year.
Karen Albrecht asks the kids in her classroom at the Janesville Community Day Care Center to give examples of what they've done today that was worthy of a "positive point." The classroom is one of the Preschool 4 Janesville classrooms, a new program this year.
Things we learned on the fifth day of Janesville’s new 4-year-old kindergarten program:
* Raise your hand when you want to talk.
* Don’t touch the butterflies in Miss Karen’s butterfly cage.
* It’s not OK to grab a fellow student’s toy owl and throw it.
* If you don’t follow instructions, you lose privileges.
* Mommies can bake a delicious birthday cake, sew a loose button on a teddy bear and hold you when you’re feeling sad.
And so can daddies.
That’s a short list of lessons dispensed at Janesville Community Day Care, one of 15 day cares or preschools around the city that have joined the Janesville School District in the venture that began Sept. 2.
Close to 550 children are enrolled in the program. The state calls it 4-year-old kindergarten, but district officials came up with their own name, Preschool 4 Janesville, or P4J.
The teachers at Janesville Community Day Care even teach a cheer about it: “Hurray, hurray for P4J!”
Children spend two-and-one-half hours a day in the classes. At Janesville Community Day Care, the program looks much like a normal preschool.
Critics had worried that 4-year-old kindergarten would be too much like higher grades, with reading, writing and 'rithmetic forced on children whose brains were not ready for it.
“It’s not like that at all. It’s very play-based,” said Theresa Marshall, JCDC’s director. “By the end of our school year, it’s amazing. A lot of our children are actually writing … their own words,” Marshall said.
While academics are a part of the curriculum, they are part of games, songs and discussions.
A Janesville Gazette reporter and photographer spent last Monday morning with teachers Karen Albrecht, Wanda Elzy and 11 4-year-olds.
Albrecht took multiple opportunities that day to talk about the sounds of letters, colors and shapes and to count.
“Daryen, let’s see how many friends are ready and waiting, can you help me count?”
At 9 a.m., Albrecht was settling the children down for their first activity of the day.
“One, two, three, four, five friends are ready and waiting,” she said.
Some children sat on the carpet immediately. Others milled around.
Albrecht and Elzy stressed the rules of behavior and getting along with fellow students. The teachers called everyone “friends.”
“Good self-regulation! Good stopping!” Albrecht praised students at one point as they stopped drawing when the music stopped, which was part of their game.
A child who refused to join in the activities got a warning. Albrecht held up one finger, then two. If the child still didn’t respond, he was given a message whispered in the ear, and consequences. One child was forbidden to play with his favorite thing during playtime. In severe cases, children get a timeout.
The program calls for 437 hours of P4J for the kids during the school year, but also 87.5 hours of parenting instruction for parents. P4J is about families.
Albrecht drew four stick figures on a whiteboard.
“Can you tell me what kind of people they are?”
Most kids knew to raise their hands to answer just five days into the school year.
“A girl and a boy,” said one.
“A mom and a dad,” said another.
“So what do we have?”
“A family!” a girl exclaimed.
Which lead Albrecht to the message of the day. She wrote it on the board: "We are going to talk about families today.”
Even though the “friends” don’t read, Albrecht went over the sentence, pointing to letters and voicing their sounds.
“What is the first sound we hear in ‘going?’”
“I have to go potty.”
“You may go potty.”
Kids easily slipped off topic. Albrecht responded gently to each outburst and then steered back to the activity.
Parent Tom Holevas has his youngest child, Hunter, in Albrecht’s class.
“It’s a big financial help. For the past nine years I’ve been paying day care,” said Holevas, who runs his own painting company while his wife teaches for another P4J provider, Head Start.
Holevas knows that P4J will introduce his son to Jolly Phonics, a program that continues in 5-year-old kindergarten.
Just as important, Holevas said, is that P4J gives the children a common base of knowledge by the time they enter kindergarten next fall.
“Everybody’s at the same level, then,” Holevas said. “You don’t have the teacher focusing on this kid because he doesn’t know how to write his name, which then takes away from my kid learning how to write a sentence or spell ‘apple.’”
Officials hope that low-income families who couldn’t afford preschool will now send their children. The hope is that the early boost will mean better grades and fewer behavioral problems for their next 13 years of school.
“I would like to say that as a result of this, long term, our community would be stronger,” said P4J coordinator Kristen Moisson. “Our children will be better prepared for a school experience.”
Moisson could offer no numbers, but she was confident that low-income families are being served.
“I think we definitely are meeting that need for families that could never afford to send their children to preschool because it is costly,” Moisson said.
The structured part of the program lasted about 90 minutes. Then, kids were free to choose a play area. They could draw or read, or play with blocks or puppets or a box of plastic animals or the toy kitchen set.
One child looked forlornly at the blocks, where his buddy was playing. Blocks were off limits on this day because he wasn’t following instructions earlier.
Albrecht got out her monarch butterfly cage and put it on a table, inviting anyone who wanted to see how she puts a tracking sticker on a butterfly’s wing.
For years, Albrecht has been involved in a project in which she releases monarchs, which are tracked by a University of Kansas program.
Albrecht has taught the kids a song she composed about how the caterpillar becomes a butterfly and flies all the way to Mexico. One girl already had figured out how to pronounce a tongue twister: chrysalises.
School officials are betting that kids who join P4J will become like those chrysalises, changing into strong, beautiful fliers for the rest of their lives.
---
Experts in the field say preschool can make a huge difference, improving children’s chances to succeed in school and in the rest of their lives.
It’s supposed to help all kids, but the most dramatic gains might be seen in the lives of poor children, according to studies.
But all that is true only if the preschool is of high quality, studies say.
So, is Preschool 4 Janesville of high quality?
“That’s what we’re going to find out. We certainly hope that it is,” said Donna Behn, director of curriculum and instruction for the school district.
To find out, the district has hired a consultant to visit every P4J classroom this fall and again in the spring to conduct a comprehensive evaluation.
It’s called the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, or ECERS.
ECERS is a checklist that covers everything from cleanliness and safety to how many books are available, the amount of space, the kinds of furnishings, how language reasoning is taught, activities, program structure and staff quality, to name a few.
Based on the ratings, a school will develop a plan of improvement. Most schools that have used ECERS have found they improved quality, Behn said.
After the first year, ECERS will be done once a year, and P4J Coordinator Kristen Moisson will be trained to do it from then on, Behn said.
In addition to ECERS, P4J staff will have opportunities to improve through training.
As the years go by, officials hope to see fewer children identified as having learning disabilities because they got help early on.
Hopes are that state test scores in reading and math also will improve districtwide, Behn said.
SLIDESHOW
Click here to view a slideshow of kids at a P4J school learning about butterflies.
P4J ENROLLMENT
The numbers are expected to fluctuate throughout the year, but these are the numbers of children enrolled in the Preschool 4 Janesville classrooms on Sept. 3.
51: Cargill Christian Preschool and Daycare, 2000 Wesley Ave.
16: Children’s Learning Center at Blackhawk Technical College, 6004 S. County G.
40: Community Kids Learning Center, 2230 Center Ave.
21: Creative Children’s Learning Center, 2419 Harvard Drive.
13: Fingerprints of God, 524 Benton Ave.
61: Goelzer’s First Step Nursery School, 1600 E. Milwaukee St.
44: Hand in Hand Learning Center, 2200 Ruger Ave.
62: Head Start, St. Peter’s Church, 1422 Center Ave., and at Jefferson Elementary School, 1831 Mount Zion Ave.
32: Janesville Community Day Care Center, 3103 Ruger Ave.
22: Janesville Montessori Children’s House, 1219 S. Oakhill Ave.
3: Kids’ House, 336 Milton Ave.
28: KinderCare Learning Center, 3327 E. Milwaukee St.
4: LSS Child’s First Child Care and Preschool, 612 N. Randall Ave.
16: YMCA, 221 Dodge St.
15: YWCA, 1735 S. Washington St.
Title I pre-kindergarten P4J programs *:
14: Adams Elementary School, 1138 E. Memorial Drive.
11: Jackson Elementary School, 441 Burbank Ave.
16: Jefferson Elementary School.
15: Madison Elementary School.
15: Roosevelt Elementary School.
15: Washington Elementary School.
30: Wilson Elementary School.
544: Total P4J enrollment
Note: Some of the classrooms also include children whose parents pay for the service because they do not qualify for P4J. They may be children who are too young, who live in a different school district or who are not enrolled for the entire 437 hours offered during the school year. These students are not listed here.
* Title 1 sites are paid for with federal funds, as they have been for many years, but they receive the same program as children at the other sites.
SIGN UP
Parents may still sign their children up for Preschool 4 Janesville. P4J, like 5-year-old kindergarten, is state-funded, not compulsory and free to families who live in the Janesville School District. Children must have turned 4 years old by Sept. 1. For information, contact P4J coordinator Kristen Moisson at (608) 743-5059.