The Oregon-Davis preschool program is back up and running. The school board got a tour of the preschool classrooms last month, but teacher Tish Cooper says there’s one thing you won’t find there.
“We are not having any technology in preschool, no iPads,” she said. “They were offered. I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They get enough of that at home. We will use books. We will use writing. We will be doing all the other things, but we are not having iPads in preschool.”
Cooper told board members that kids are so used to screens that it’s begun to affect their fine motor skills. “I mean, writing is just atrocious because their little hands don’t even have the muscles to hold a pencil and write at this stage,” Cooper said.
She said a big goal of the preschool program is making sure kids know how to “do school” by the time they start kindergarten, along with their letters and numbers.
So far, the program is proving to be popular. Superintendent Bill Bennett said they’re offering two morning classes and two afternoon classes. “We are super-excited that, basically, kind of what we thought was a great need, it is a great need,” he said, “and we’re seeing it fill up quickly.”
Bennett said they hope to have the preschool accredited by the end of the year, to make it eligible for the state’s On My Way Pre-K program.
