AUBURN – Androscoggin Head Start and Child Care’s Washburn Center Classroom 2 is preparing the 4- and 5-year-olds for their next challenge: entering kindergarten.

Thirteen of the 18 students enrolled in this full-day, full-year preschool and child care classroom will leave in August to begin elementary school.

Teacher Regina Palumbo, along with Teacher Assistants Becky Lowe, Melinda Blair and Jennifer Lee, have been working with the children all year on preschool skills, such as colors, numbers and letters, and also science, writing and math skills.

In science, the children have been learning about animal habitats, hatching eggs and, a favorite of the kids, mud. The children have been busy writing their letters and practicing their names.

Charting and graphing has been taught to build math and language skills. Through simple cooking skills, such as measuring ingredients and preparing recipes, the children have increased their math skills, and also have had the fun of eating something that they made on their own.

To reinforce their newly acquired skills, the classroom will take a field trip to the Children’s Museum of Maine in Portland.

Androscoggin Head Start and Child Care has provided child development services to pregnant women, families and children, newborn to age 5, for more than 41 years. Program options include full-day, half-day, home-based, family child care, and infant and toddler early Head Start.

Services are provided annually to more than 400 children and families throughout Androscoggin County. Centers are located in Lewiston, Auburn, Lisbon Falls, Livermore Falls, Mechanic Falls and Turner.

Applications are accepted at any time. Call 795-4040 for more information or visit www.androkids.com.