All Children Can Start School Prepared to Succeed!
That’s the goal behind a totally amazing website I found today, School Sparks, where you’ll find a ton of really great resources for your child.
School Sparks is targeted towards parents of preschool kids, who are preparing them for school, and wanting to know if their child has the needed skills and development to start kindergarten. It has an assessment you can use to see how your little one is doing, and loads of great resources and activites! It’s also great for those with kiddo’s who have already started school, with fun activities to reinforce the skills that they’re learning each day.
Read More:
This site is run by Renee, who is a preschool and kindergarten teacher, now retired after decades of educating young children. Heather is her daughter, mother of two young boys. This blog is their collective scrapbook, passing wisdom from one generation to the next.
Free eBook:
Get the Free eBook, Stepping Stones for Early Readers, that will help prepare your little one for school, as well as help develop reading skills in kids who are already learning words at school.
Free Worksheets:
This site has over 100 different Kindergarten worksheets that you can access and print! There are sections for developing gross and fine motor skills, social and emotional awareness, and fun pages like Alphabet Parade. I love, love, LOVE these printable worksheets! We put some of them into page protectors, so that my little guy can use dry-erase markers to do activities several times.
Free Assessment Test:
This site also has a Kindergarten Readiness Testthat is really easy to use. It asks a few questions in each of the major categories, and you simply click a box for “yes or no”, then get an evaluation of what your kiddo might want to work on to get ready for school. My littlest guy is starting Kindergarten this year, so this was a really cool tool to see where he still needs some help!
Understand How Early Child Development in 8 Areas is Critical to School Success:
Get information on Early Childhood Development, including what will be expected of your little one during preschool and kindergarten.
This covers the 8 areas of that are most important:
- Gross Motor Development
- Fine Motor Development
- Auditory Processing
- Visual Discrimination
- Letter and Word Awareness
- Phonemic Awareness
- Math and Number Awareness
- Social and Emotional Development
This is just one of the coolest sites, with SO much helpful information and tools, and it’s all presented in such a bright, fun, easy to find layout.
You can find them anywhere you’re hanging out on the web:
- Their website: SchoolSparks.com.
- Their Facebook page.
- On their blog: School Sparks Blog– Make sure to sign up for the newsletter!
- And on Twitter too!
{More great kids activites: Sign up for free, educational, safe gaming accounts just for kids: Time Island, and Kabongo, two of our families favorites!}
Hi Meagan,
I am so touched by your amazingly rave review of my website. I have been working so hard to create all the worksheets and e-books and posts like yours from parents who are really enjoying the content makes it all worth while. Thank you, thank you, thank you. –Renee
No Renee, Thank YOU!!!!
You’re site is so bright and cheerful, and I just love using it :) The graphics, the colors, the navigation- They’re all so great. You’ve done a great job.
And the kids LOVE your worksheets! I’m excited to take some time this weekend to look over the material in the eBooks more… I’m sure they’ll be super helpful.
So what I’m saying is, you ROCK!