LANDIS — Preschool age children had the opportunity at the Rowan Public Library South Branch on Saturday to work on fine motor skills, counting skills and responsibility in order to prepare themselves for kindergarten.

The event, titled “Take Your Child to the Library Day,” is part of a national effort to get families to head to libraries across the nation on Feb. 3. Rowan County’s event was hosted at the south branch in Landis.

The event was aimed at teaching kindergarten-readiness skills, which Children’s Librarian Melissa Gephart said was in response to difficulties some of her pre-kindergarten teacher friends said they were having

“A lot of teacher friends and a lot of my parents of preschoolers were telling me that, ‘My child just isn’t doing well in preschool. It’s taking so long for them to get just basic concepts.’ COVID really put a lot of kids behind too because they missed out on a lot of social opportunities, things that the library provides,” said Gephart.

One activity offered was the “Ice Cream Math” game, where children put the correct numbers of “scoops”, actually pom-poms, onto each cone with tongs. The cones were marked with a number. Skills that the game taught were fine-motor skills and hand/eye coordination, counting, following instructions and responsibility. Children were asked to clean up the area when they finished so the next kid had a clean area to start with.

Another option was the “Match the Socks” game, which asked children to find the matching pairs of socks from the pile and clip them together, working on color, shape and pattern recognition. After that was done, children could count the number of matches to work on their counting skills or match all the socks by color to work on their sorting. The game also worked on fine motor skills and responsibility.

Gephart said that the emphasis on fine motor skills was because children did not naturally develop the muscles in their hands at preschool ages, so making the pinching motions that the games asked them to perform helped them train their hands for fine motions. Gephart said that without working on these motions, children would struggle to perform necessary tasks such as holding a pencil to write.

The emphasis on responsibility was a response to how many students are starting behind in social situations due to the lack of experiences during the pandemic.

“When I worked in South Carolina, looking at the standards, a lot of it revolved around color recognition, shape recognition, sorting but also things that you wouldn’t think kids have to practice like waiting in line, taking turns, cleaning up their stations when they finish. Responsibility is a big part of it. If you think about a kindergarten teacher who’s got 20 kids who have never practiced waiting in line when mom and dad aren’t with them, it’s like herding cats trying to get 20 little ones all lined up,” said Gephart.

Gephart said that the library has a kindergarten readiness event planned for May 6 at 5 p.m. in the Rowan Public Library Headquarters, located on West Fisher Street in Salisbury. That event will be a collaboration between the library and Smart Start Rowan. Literacy stations will be set up and parents will also be able to get information about programs that their kids can enter.