After serving the community of Key Peninsula for more than a decade, I have developed an understanding of the needs of children and families in our community. Currently, we know that there is a tremendous need on Key Peninsula for early learning services.

I am honored to announce that one of our main partners on Key Peninsula wants to support our children and families and has provided $20,000 a year for three years from United Way of Pierce County toward a one-day-a-week preschool.

This new effort really builds upon our program called Indoor Park, which we have been offering for more than 20 years at the civic center as a safe place for children and families to play and learn together. In 2016, the drop-in program Indoor Park served 144 children and 112 parents on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Indoor Park has become the platform for developing and implementing our new, free cooperative preschool program Ready-Set-Go, which was added in late January. Our continued goal is to have more children and their families participate in early learning services.

We have room for 10 children and their parents. Our focus is to provide a high-quality program to children 3 and 4-year-olds, so they can be successful in kindergarten. This mindset of cooperative early learning is all about strengthening the connections between caregivers and their children.

Ready-Set-Go will be both a drop-in program and a sign-up program. We hope to increase math and literacy development by having parents and children interactively read and play together. Books will be provided through our lending library, so parents can reach to their children. At Children’s Home Society of Washington, we believe that parents are the child’s first teacher and we hope to encourage continued learning at home for 10 minutes a day.

For more information, please contact me at jud.morris@chs-wa.org, or (253) 884-5433.

Jud Morris serves as community manager of Key Peninsula Family Resource Center.