Monthly Report

April/May 2008

The Early Childhood Mental Health Committee along with the Prevention Research Center, the Early Development and Education Institute, and Cen-Clear Child Service coordinated the two day training on "Tuning in to Kids" on May 5 & 6 presented by Sophie Havighurst and Ann Harley. There were approximately 55 attendees and feedback from the event was very positive.
This committee is also looking for more funding opportunities for its Mental Health Consultation program.

The Pre-K Calendar is printed, and the committee will begin distribution at the May 13 meeting. This year the calendar highlights photos of father and children, and many new photos were included from local programs.
The One Book Every Young Child project has been a success with about 35 child care centers and homes participating. The feedback from the participating centers and from the readers has been very positive. Many thanks to Cindy Perttu for coordinating this project!

The ECE Transition Team plans to review and revise its goals for next year for each of the sub-committees. An overall goal for the team is to develop and publish (in printed form) a transition plan for Centre County.
The Child-to-School sub-committee will work to provide the "Kick-Off to Kindergarten" event again to help prepare families for the registration process. They will also include suggested changes that were made in order to make the event even more successful.
The Family-to-School sub-committee will evaluate and implement the Kindergarten Parent Survey again as a tool to assess what works and does not work for families during the transition process.
The School-to-School sub-committee will distribute the "Getting to Know Your Child Checklist" again as a tool for offered to early care and education practitioners to share information with the Centre County school districts.
The Community-to-all sub-committee will collect information about various events each of the 5 Centre County school districts that take place in order to accomplish the transition to Kindergarten. This information can then be printed and distributed.

The Report Card to the Community has been printed and is ready to be distributed.
This committee will also be directing the advocacy efforts throughout the county over the next two months. Specifically, we want parents and providers to write letters to their legislators expressing how they are benefiting from state programs. We also want business and community leaders to write letters to the editor. This committee will be coordinating visits to local legislators.

May 13, 2008 will be Early Childhood Advocacy Day in Harrisburg. This is when Early Childhood programs are encouraged to send staff and parents to visit state legislators in their offices. A bus will be available and for more information you can go to www.paQUEST.org.
Smart Start will be participating in a fundraiser with the State College Spikes. We are selling tickets in a friendly competition with two other United Way agencies (Children’s Aid Society and Centre County Youth Services Bureau) for the Focus on Children and Families Night on Wednesday, August 13. If you would like to purchase tickets please contact the Smart Start office. Volunteers are also needed to help with this event.
Smart Start would like to thank Katie Cuppett and Cindy Perttu for all of their hard work this semester. We also want to congratulate them on their graduation from Penn State!