TREASURE COAST — For children to enter kindergarten ready for school, they need to be learning from infancy, have positive preschool experiences, and most importantly, have active involvement with their parents.
Through a $10,000 grant from the PNC Foundation, the Early Learning Coalition of Indian River, Martin, and Okeechobee Counties (ELC) is teaching 40 Treasure Coast parents to help their four year old children to “learn through play” by using the Ready! for Kindergarten program.
“PNC recognizes the role kindergarten readiness plays in the long-term success of local children, their families, and ultimately, our economy. By preparing our youngest citizens for educational achievement, we help build a solid foundation for the future of this region,” said Craig Grant, PNC regional president for Florida east, speaking on behalf of the PNC Foundation.
PNC is deeply committed to supporting educational programs for underserved children through partnerships nationwide.
Through Grow Up Great, its $350 million, multi-year, bilingual initiative that began in 2004 to help prepare children from birth to age 5 for success in school and life, it has supported innovative programs emphasizing math, science, the arts, and financial education for more than 1.7 million at-risk preschool children.
This year, the program will focus on parents as child care providers where readiness scores were in need of improvement and consist of three training sessions in each county.
Parents learn how to best interact with their children to give them the language literacy, math reasoning, and social/emotional skills they will need to succeed in school.
“While there are many early learning training programs to support teachers in the classroom, this program focuses on a child’s first and most influential teacher: their parents,” explained ELC Director of Programs Pat Houston.
The sessions were held from January through May and received positive reviews from parents.
“The parents were fully engaged. One of the dads raved about the methods he learned of using simple puzzles and games to teach children different skills, such as prepositional phrases and colors,” added Houston.
Parents are asked to spend 10 minutes with their child on these activities each day and to read to their child 20 minutes each day.
These simple, new teaching skills are able to enhance their children’s learning when they are not at school, and especially in the summer months when many children are not involved in any academic or educational programs.
Each family in the Ready! for Kindergarten program receives a kit of high-quality, reusable materials to continue the learning activities at home.
“We are very grateful for the PNC Foundation’s grant, as we will have more children with mastery of essential skills before entering kindergarten,” said Houston.
For more information about the Early Learning Coalition, please visit www.ELCIRMO.org.
