Cultural, Education, Family, Local, News, Youth

United Way of Northern Arizona — ‘My Baby Girl Learned So Much’

by Community Contributor • July 14, 2023 • Comments Off

Summer always is a special time, and for me one of the biggest highlights of the season is visiting KinderCamp™ classes.

It is always magical watching four- and five-year-olds gaining the confidence and skills they need to make a successful start in kindergarten.

KinderCamp is one of United Way of Northern Arizona’s signature programs to Step Up for Our Youth, and judging from the parents’ comments you’ll see below, it is making a huge impact in the lives of our students.

Many thanks to our partners – and to individual donors like you – who make this program possible.

From the desk of:

Liz Archuleta

President & CEO

Parents Give Rave Reviews to KinderCamp™

For four weeks this summer, 130 preschoolers in Flagstaff, Williams, and Pinetop-Lakeside got a preview of what kindergarten will be like this year.

In KinderCamp™ – one of United Way of Northern Arizona’s signature early education initiatives – they learned what it’s like to ride in a school bus, eat in a cafeteria setting, learn letters and numbers, and work cooperatively with other students.

The biggest transformations for these students, according to their parents, was their increased confidence and excitement to start school. Here are some of the comments parents made at the end of KinderCamp:

My baby girl learned so much and has become so much more outgoing – thank you so much.
Riding the bus has given my son a sense of independence.
She loved sharing her projects with us and any songs she learned that day. We loved our experience with KinderCamp!
My child would talk about KinderCamp every day and night after school.
He was able to sign his Father’s Day card for his daddy.

In fact, of 88 parents surveyed, 73.6% said that as a results of KinderCamp, their child’s ability to socialize with other children had substantially improved; 71.1% said their ability to communicate with adults had substantially improved, and 65.9% felt their child knew more letters and sounds of the alphabet.

KinderCamp began in 2005 after a survey identified early childhood learning as a major concern in the region. The program is provided for free for families, but the estimated expenses per student is about $800, said KinderCamp coordinator Sara Owen.

This includes transportation, teacher and staff salaries, facility costs, teaching supplies, meals, the end-of-program “bridging over” ceremony, and literacy kits filled with books, low- or no-cost activities, sidewalk chalk and more, so families can continue to help their child learn throughout the summer.

As in previous years, KinderCamp also had many guests visit the classrooms during the program, including nutritionists, a pediatric doctor, the “tooth fairy” (an oral health expert from Coconino County Health and Human Services), and members of the men’s and women’s basketball teams at Northern Arizona University.

In addition to teaching them about brushing their teeth, healthy eating, and how to make a free throw, these interactions helped students communicate better with adults, Owen said.

“They gain a lot of independence,” she said. “They start to help their peers, to ask questions, to know that it’s okay to make mistakes and learn from them. All of them will take those leadership skills with them as they enter into kindergarten.”

Each year the program ends with the “bridging over” ceremony, which students cross over a small bridge to symbolize that they are ready to start their academic careers.

Each school works to make their KinderCamp™ experience unique, often coordinating classes, trips and the ending ceremony around a theme for the entire month. At Blue Ridge Elementary, for example, KinderCamp was all about having a carnival, and instead of going over a symbolic bridge, the students pretended to cross the stage on a tightrope.

One thing all of the bridging over ceremonies have in common is how proud – and sometimes emotional – the parents get seeing their child reach this milestone.

“We did have many families at bridging over grabbing the tissues,” Owen said. “Sometimes they are sad that the program is ending for the year, but mostly I think they are happy about their child growing up.”

The program would not be possible without partnerships with the three school districts who hosted this year: the Flagstaff Unified School District, Williams Unified School District #2, and the Blue Ridge Unified School District.

In addition to individual donations, KinderCamp also benefits from the sponsorship of several organizations and businesses, including: the Arizona Governor’s Office of Summer Enrichment Programming; Coconino County; the offices of Coconino County Supervisors Patrice Horstman, Matt Ryan, and Jeronimo Vasquez; APS; Bank of the West; Dollar General; Kinney Construction Services; the NARBHA Institute; the Phoenix Suns Foundation; the Salt River Project and Wells Fargo.

Please consider donating to the United Way of Northern Arizona today and help fund programs like KinderCamp. With your support, we can provide vital early childhood development programs to more students and reach more schools in Coconino, Navajo and Apache counties.