School Prep to Begin at Birth in Mamaroneck

Small Treasures Early Learning Program Open House: Tuesday, Dec. 19

by Judy Silberstein

(December 15, 2006) Mamaroneck’s tiniest scholars – newborns to age 3 – and their parents will have their own “school” starting in January, thanks to a partnership between two anonymous private benefactors and the Mamaroneck School District. Small Treasures Early Learning Program, to be housed at Mamaroneck Avenue School (MAS), will offer story times, parent workshops, Mommy/Daddy and Me events and other activities aimed at promoting literacy for these young learners by supporting the children’s first teachers, their parents.

By law, the school district cannot fund programs for children of this age, explained Superintendent Paul Fried. So the district approached two individuals, who have contributed a total of $55,000 to get the program started and to hire staff, including a half-time family specialist, educationalist specialist and teaching aide. Parent volunteers will be welcome to help. To keep the program going in the future, the district will be working with the same benefactors and also looking for additional continuous funding streams.

The new program extends a trend in education to begin preparing children for school at earlier and earlier ages. For decades, Mamaroneck schools have provided a mix of full and half-day kindergarten for all children. In recent years, the program has been extended to full-day at Mamaroneck Avenue School for all kindergarteners and for some children in the other three elementary schools. Also at MAS, the district runs a pre-K program for 3- and 4-year-olds, funded jointly by the district and a New York State grant. (See: What's New in Pre-K at Mamaroneck Avenue School?)

Now, with the Small Treasures program, school prep will begin at infancy, when the building blocks of literacy are set.

“If you could put a definition to the program, having kids show up for school prepared, would be it,” said Superintendent Fried. He explained that some children are ready - socially and academically - for what schools have to offer. Others are not. On the first day of school, “What we would characterize as the achievement gap already exists,” he said.

“Even though we have in this district very rich resources for children who are coming to us in those circumstances, catching up is very hard,” he said.

What sorts of skills might children lack?

“We are still seeing kids who have not had those early experiences and who in fact might be holding a book upside down – or may not even understand what books are all about,” said Superintendent Fried. “It’s a conceptual thing to understand that books have meaning and are not a random string of pictures. Children learn because parents read aloud to them from the time they are two months old – but not in all households,” he explained.

Other gaps exist in early language acquisition. “In some homes there is a lot of rich language going on with infants,” said the superintendent. Those children enter school with a “pretty significant vocabulary.” Where that rich kind of language is not going on, children start school with far fewer words, often less than 50% as much.

“I would imagine that a large percentage of children who don’t succeed in the later grades, in fact came to school with deficits in their readiness,” said Dr. Fried. “The concept of Small Treasures is to prevent the deficits from occurring.”

Teaching Babies Through Parents and Peers

Many of the Small Treasures programs will be specifically for parents. The babies will attend story times or Mommy/Daddy and Me events with a parent or caregiver. Other workshops are just for the adults, to help them understand and carry out literacy education at home, as part of their everyday routine.

The Small Treasures Center “will be a place where parents can bring their children to play with other children and experience age-appropriate instructional materials,” explains a brochure about the new program.

District Invitation

An Open House will be held on Tuesday, December 19, at 1:30pm in the Multipurpose Room at Mamaroneck Avenue School. Parents and children are encouraged to stop in, meet the staff and learn more about the program.

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