About two out of three children in Niles Township, which includes Skokie, Lincolnwood and parts of Morton Grove and Niles, are not ready for kindergarten, data shows, even though research indicates that the time between birth to five years of age is a critical learning period that can set the stage for children’s educational and career potential.
Data from the Illinois State Board of Education’s 2019Kindergarten Individual Development Survey shows 64% of children in Niles, Skokie, Lincolnwood and Morton Grove don’t meet benchmarks that demonstrate they are ready for kindergarten.
Local organization Early Childhood Alliance recently held a resource fair to connect local families to programs and resources covering childcare, heath services and preschool programming, among other needs.
Alliance Executive Director Tina Vanderwarker said almost 400 children and parents attended the event, which featured information on resources ranging from the federal government’s Women, Infants and Children (WIC) programs to more local initiatives like the Skokie Health Equity Network.
About 30 different organizations participated, Vanderwarker said.
The goal was “getting families access to information about the importance of early learning,” Vanderwarker explained.
More broadly, the Early Childhood Alliance focuses on educating families on how the first five years of a child’s life can influence their trajectories beyond age five: “So much of brain development happens before children start elementary school at the age of five,” Vanderwarker said.
Kindergarten readiness is more than “knowing your letters and numbers and being able to count,” she said. It’s also about “social-emotional readiness and regulation and being able to follow one- and two-step directions.”
Children pick those skills up in a group setting around other kids, she said.
“A lot of it is problem solving: what do you do if you want to do an activity your friend doesn’t want to do, how do you solve that?” Vanderwarker said. “If they know how to approach a friend and ask them to play… those are huge skills for children to have in place by the time they start kindergarten.”
“We had a couple of families that came at 10 and stayed for the whole time,” Vanderwarker said.
She said the linguistic and cultural diversity of the area was on full display at the event.
“This event was really great because we had a lot of different languages that were being spoken,” she said. Families were able to use translators to communicate with organizations at the event where there was a language barrier.
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For families who may be newly arrived in the United States and need childcare and other early childhood resources, Vanderwarker said language and communication are major challenges.
“Our early childhood system and resources are hard to navigate if you do speak the language… and I think a lot of times families just give up on that,” she said.
The Early Childhood Alliance is focusing on building relationships with families who may not know about resources for their children aged 0-5 or who may be hesitant about using them, Vanderwarker said.
“There are a lot of early childhood programs that both offer part-day and full-day programs, there are a lot of home visiting services for families who aren’t yet comfortable with their child being outside of the home,” she said.
Often, she continued, it’s just a question of getting a recommendation or a connection to a resource from someone a family knows and trusts.
