School Readiness Backpacks

The goal of Uwwc's School Readiness Backpack Program is to foster family engagement to support kindergarten readiness.  The backpacks aim to provide parents with the education and resources they need to successfully carry out their role as their child's first and most important teacher. We hope that our backpacks will promote positive program-family connections and lead to greater kindergarten readiness, academic motivation, and grade promotion among the 3-5 year old children who receive a  backpack.

Each School Readiness Backpack is comprised of a backpack stuffed with a binder that lists developmentally appropriate learning activities for parents to use with their children and organizes them based on the following categories: reading, language, art, health, safety, development, math, science and social studies. The backpack also contains 2 bilingual (English/Spanish) books pertaining to the activities from the binder, a Usda MyPlate and activity booklet, as well as a pencil pouch containing developmentally appropriate scissors, crayons and a music Cd. Our community partners integrate the  backpacks with their curriculum and demonstrate them to parents (and sometimes their children) during training sessions where they go through the activities and explain the rationality behind the various components of the  backpack

We strategically partner with early childhood education programs that are already serving our target demographic - low-income and/or Spanish-Speaking families with 3-5 year old children.

Accepted to the Portfolio: March 2015