School Readiness Project Sets Foundation for Successful Learning

How do you make a trip to the grocery store into an opportunity to teach your child words? How do you turn your front porch into a nature walk or turn your kitchen into a science lab? The School Readiness Project has those answers and more about preparing children for their first classroom experience.

An initiative of the Los Angeles Educational Partnership's FamilyCare program, the School Readiness Project helps prepare young children, zero to three years old, for school success by developing needed learning skills at home. Paraprofessionals work with parents teaching them how to stimulate learning in their children on a daily basis.

"The parent or caregiver is a child's first and most important teacher," says School Readiness coordinator Josephina Sapriza. "The first years of a child's life have a profound and lasting impact on a child's ability to learn. Many young children come to school and don't have good language development, which is the building block to good reading skills."

Using fun, creative, and inexpensive methods, School Readiness lets families enjoy learning through games and activities that prepare young children for school. Parents can help their children develop healthy minds and bodies by talking, sharing, and doing activities together. With a focus on reading and literacy, activities include simple crafts parents and children can make together out of common household items, identifying insects that live around the house and conducting simple science experiments in the kitchen using common foods. Parents are taught how to speak to their children in ways that make them more inquisitive.

"School Readiness paraprofessionals who live in the community bring new and exciting activities into the home and share how parents can help their children become readers and thinkers who are ready for school," Sapriza said.

Now in its third year, School Readiness paraprofessionals work with more than 100 families in the San Fernando/Pacoima area Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley. FamilyCare works with schools and their communities to develop and implement effective strategies for increasing access to health, social and community services for children and families. The program also strengthens the role parents play at the school site and in the community by engaging them in the development and delivery of needed services.

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