Services

• Family Support
• Health & Wellness
• Early Education
• Elementary Education
• Teen Parents

Success starts well before the first school bell.

The National Research Council and Institute of Medicine found that a child’s most important developmental years are from birth until age 5. Unfortunately, 95% of public investment in education only serves children after age 5. If we continue to wait for schools to teach our children, we’ve waited years too long. Parents need to play an important role in their children’s early education at home.

Studies prove that if a child receives support in developing physical, cognitive, social and emotional skills during this period, he or she is more likely to succeed later in life — reducing the chances the child will drop out of school, receive welfare benefits or commit crime.

Our family educators engage parents in their children’s education — showing them how to teach through everyday interaction and play.

Home Visits

Many Way to Grow families work multiple jobs, have limited resources (including transportation), and face cultural or other barriers. Home visits, WTG’s hallmark initiative, address all aspects of family life and early and elementary education. In 2010, Way to Grow’s researched based home visiting curriculum (Read Together, Talk Together) was used in 8,749 home visits.

Early Education

Our family educators engage parents with their children’s education—showing them how to teach through everyday interaction through home visits.

Way to Grow knows that literacy begins at birth. The Great by Eight Program teaches the “Big Five” literacy skills: vocabulary, book and print rules, phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge and conversation skills. Parents are taught dialogic reading, in which they have conversations with their children through books. The goal of the Great by Eight Early Education Program is to have every child hear 50 million words or sounds so they have a vocabulary of 12,000 words by age 5.

Family Learning Time

In this center-based program, two family educators lead a parent-child interaction session with the Emerge Supportive Housing Program. The program uses the Way to Grow curriculum to provide on site pre-literacy and school readiness skills. Way to Grow Family Educators also provide home visits to the families participating in Family Learning Time.

Preschool Pals

Designed for children ages 3–5, Preschool Pals is a center-based class that provides programming for 30 children, four days a week.

The FATHER Project

Partnering with the Goodwill/Easter Seals program, we help fathers overcome the barriers that prevent them from supporting their children economically and emotionally — so they can provide safe and happy home environments for their families.