South Washington County Schools Early Childhood Family Education: LEAP Together!

Through a partnership with ACCESS (an English Learner Program in South Washington County Schools), Community Education has brought back an exciting program for families! LEAP is an acronym for Literacy Education And Parenting and combines the amazing language learning services of ACCESS with Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE). Through this program, adults have the opportunity to benefit from two hours of classroom time including language learning and parent education. So far, it's been a great success!

While parents are in their own classroom, their children spend time with a licensed early childhood educator and highly trained paraprofessionals. They do fun classroom projects, valuable child-directed play, fun activities geared toward children from birth to five years of age, and enjoy time in the large motor room. Some of our littlest learners take a nap, too! After the parents return from their time of education and connecting, they have parent-child interaction time in the early childhood classroom, playing and learning with their children.

Other benefits of this program include transportation provided by the school district four afternoons per week to our Central Park location. Classes run every afternoon, Monday through Thursday, from 1:15 to 3:45 pm so that parents can take advantage of afternoon preschool programming onsite if they so desire. The feedback has been wonderful and we are thrilled to be meeting the needs of our local population.

We all know that being a parent is challenging. Imagine navigating the school and community environment with limited language skills! In the LEAP program, parents and their children don't need to feel alone. They have the care and support from educators and other parents in the same spot, even if they don't share the same language (there are TEN languages represented in this class)! We are proud of this new and improved program.

Click here to view our winter/spring catalog for class registration and more information. And if you'd like to get involved as a volunteer, more information can be found here! Thanks in advance for supporting these families as they LEAP Together!