School district’s Birch Bay pre-K program is back

By Oliver Lazenby

An elementary school in Birch Bay might still be years away, but the Blaine school district is already running a preschool program at Birch Bay Bible Community Church. The program, called Kaleidoscope Play and Learn, started last spring and is back this fall after a summer break.

The free weekly program for kids five and younger goes from 1:30 to 3 p.m. on Wednesdays at the church, which is at 4460 Bay Road. It includes everything from open-ended playtime to more formal group activities and even education directed at parents and caregivers.

“Overall, it’s a really good program for childhood education and great community outreach from the school district,” said Tania Baas, who teaches the program and is a paraeducator at Blaine Primary School.

Baas said about six kids are coming consistently and there’s room for more.

On a recent Wednesday at Kaleidoscope, kids were learning about the harvest season, painting with sponges, playing with trains and drawing on whiteboards. After informal play they form a circle for stories and songs.

Originally created by the Kaleidoscope Play and Learn Network in King County in 2007, the program has four main goals, according to its guidelines: to provide caregivers and parents with resources and support in order to help children learn (parents or caregivers are expected to stay for the whole session); to build connections and a circle of support; to give children developmentally appropriate learning experiences; and to give kids and caregivers a life-long love for learning.

Natalie Hawes, a Birch Bay-area resident, started bringing her son to the program to help him learn to be in a structured setting and to ease the transition to attending school, she said. 

“Also, for my own sake as a mom, I wanted to see where he is with things like sharing, kindness and socializing,” Hawes said.

The Blaine school district also hosts a Kaleidoscope Play and Learn group at Blaine Primary School from 9 to 10:30 a.m. on Fridays. That program started four years ago, according to Randy Elsbree, executive director of federal and special programs for Blaine school district.

“The Blaine program became really popular and we had a lot of parents coming from Birch Bay,” Elsbree said. “So having something in Birch Bay made a lot of sense. It’s a lot easier for parents to network with each other and plan activities at home.”

The Kaleidoscope program fits into a recent nationwide push for more early childhood education programs. In the Blaine school district, other recent changes to early childhood education include state-funded full-day kindergarten, which started in 2016-2017, and the Blaine Primary School’s summer program for incoming kindergartners.

“The earlier we can intervene and help parents work with their kids and help kids be better prepared for kindergarten, then the better off kids are going to be,” Elsbree said.