Backpack Program

Overview
The Backpack Program is a program that helps support parents in their role as their child’s first and most important teacher. Parents are given a backpack box every month to use at home with their child.  It can be exchanged every 3-5 weeks. Each backpack box has a special theme. It is filled with many books, materials, and educational toys. Suggestions of what to do with the materials are included for parents, as well as an opportunity to provide feedback. Activities included in the backpack boxes are related to language development, reading, writing, math, general knowledge, fine motor, gross motor, memory skills and creativity. Parents are offered parenting classes, a box talk to explain how to use the backpack box, a monthly newsletter and may participate in the Annual Backpack Expo.

Objectives
To provide children with common experiences to prepare them to enter kindergarten.
To support and assist parents in enriching their child’s life with meaningful experiences.
To help strengthen  the relationships between the public school, the families and community agencies.

Overview
AREA PARTICIPATION
Area Served: Delta County, Colorado

Area Active Waiting
Delta 271 13
Cedaredge 76 3
Hotchkiss 46 9
Paonia 42 10
Crawford 21 4
Total 456 37


Backpack Boxes
(Approximately 650 boxes)
  • 56 different themes
  • Bilingual boxes
  • Boxes for developmentally delayed children
  • “8 item” boxes per family need
  • Take home ABC packets
  • Developing extended enrichment boxes ’06-’07
Sample Box Themes
Food, Numbers, Health, Dinosaurs, Weather, Animals, Fire Safety, Trucks/Trains, Music, Insects, ABC, All About Me, Family, Ocean Play, Astronauts, Barney, Building, Moose, Block City, Baby Animals, Growing, The Five Senses, The Artist in Me, Farm, Madeline, Pets, Different Bears, The 3 Bears, Seashore, Forest, Pigs, Penguins, Turtles and Frogs


Parent Involvement
  • Story Time
  • Book Fair
  • Parent Inservice
  • Video & Book Library

Developmental Screenings
(ALL AREAS)

Screenings 160
Rescreening to check skills 173

Screening Tool Used: Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning (DIAL)

The Speed DIAL is the tool used for screening all Backpack Program participants. The Speed DIAL is a condensed version of the DIAL-3. It can be administered in about 15 minutes.
It is a norm-referenced screening instrument. It is meant to identify young children (ages 3 to 6 years 11 months) at-risk or with delays in one or more of the following five developmental areas: cognitive/basic concepts, language, motor, self-help, and social-emotional. (English and Spanish versions.)