Pentucket School District has begun hosting a variety of early childhood programming for toddlers and young children to help prepare them for the school years ahead.
Funded through state grant, the Massachusetts Coordinated Family and Community Engagement (CFCE) Network programming allows young children to attend programming aimed at preparing them and their parents for school. Pentucket was named one of 80 school districts and 350 cities and towns throughout the state to receive grant funding from the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC).
Pentucket’s elementary schools in Groveland, Merrimac and West Newbury all host CFCE classes. Pentucket joins other local school districts including Ipswich, Wenham, Wakefield, Triton Regional, Haverhill, and Gloucester, and public libraries in Topsfield, Beverly, Middleton, Georgetown, Swampscott, and Boxford in hosting CFCE programs.
The first session was held at the Bagnall School Wednesday morning and had four toddlers in attendance.
Final schedules are still being created, but Groveland’s Bagnall Elementary School will host “Story, Music and Movement” on Wednesdays, and the John C. Page School in West Newbury has four offerings including “Tiny Tots” and “Preschool Process Art” on Thursdays and “Pre-K Play” and “Tinker Time” on Fridays.
The “Music and Movement” programming, aimed at children as young as infants and toddlers, and it has numerous benefits in helping to develop young minds, including nurturing positive group play behaviors, social skills, fine motor skills/awareness of body movement and positioning, regulation of emotions, creativity and imagination, vocabulary and balance, coordination and rhythm, according to the Northern Illinois University Child Development and Family Center. Research also shows that not only does music education enhance fine motor skills in toddlers, but that rhythm skills contributes to pre-reading abilities which can have measurable effects during early school years.
“The Pentucket Regional School District has made great strides over the past decade in our curriculum offerings as well as offering expanded pre-k offerings, full-day kindergarten and extended day and extended year services. These programs and more have helped Pentucket students steadily improve their reading and ELA scores,” said Brent Conway, assistant superintendent. “Programs like Music and Movement and Tinker Time take our district forward another step as we look to start our infants and toddlers out on the right track and prepare them for school. We are very grateful to the state for funding and organizing this programming at no cost to Pentucket families.”
Some community members have inquired about security for these kinds of programs. The programming will be staffed by Family Connections CFCE, a state-funded program serving families with children from birth through school age whose staff are fully background checked and CORI-cleared, the same level of clearances that all public school employees must pass. The sessions will be run generally two mornings per week, in a set area of the school with specific parking and entry/exit points for attendees. Attendees will not have access to the building except for their specific room (for example, the “Small Gym” and its entry doors at Bagnall or an escort to the appropriate room at the Page School), and a school staff member has been assigned to each program session to ensure proper access control.
“From a school security standpoint, the procedures are no different than if a school parent visited the school for band concerts or plays, and as these are future school parents attending programs with their little ones, we want to create a welcoming and safe environment for all,” Conway said. “CFCE programs are purposefully held at public schools because their main purpose is to promote school readiness, by offering programs at schools to increase comfort for children getting ready to attend school and to build the foundation for a long-term relationship between families and school leaders who will be connected for as much as 16 years from CFCE, through pre-k, all the way to grade 12!”
Families with questions about the CFCE programs or who would like more information on attending Music and Movement should contact Assistant Superintendent Brent Conway at bconway@prsd.org.
