Ready for class?

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BROOKINGS – It seems like an eternity away for these young children, but kindergarten will come quickly enough. To prepare, parents in the Brookings School District have signed up for kindergarten screening appointments scheduled earlier this week at the elementary school their child would attend based on their home address.

At the screenings, teachers test the children’s ability in a variety of areas, from fine motor skills like cutting and writing, to numbers, colors and shapes.

Four-year-old Hadley Laleman, for instance, was busy Tuesday morning following student-teacher Alex Cooley’s directions on where to place the orange dinosaur on the paper, among other tests.

“That gives us a chance to assess their academic and social skills and kind of get a picture of the child,” said Dakota Prairie kindergarten teacher Kate Mogard. “That helps us when we’re putting together classes in the fall, and then parents have a chance to register their children and take care of after-school needs, visit with the nurse, figure out all those details about school and ask questions of the staff.”

The number of children registered for screening is right in line with last year, at 250. Even though this is the main chance to do so, it’s not the only chance for screening. Parents who missed this week can call the school their child would attend. The school district website has the map delineating the school boundaries in the admissions page of the district website (www.brookings.k12.sd.us), under the “Additional Information” sidebar.

As Mogard said, “We screen into the summer if we need to. … If somebody comes along, then we’d just have parents call the school and we’d find them a time after school. Sometimes people move in during the summer, so we just find time.”