Preschool Pals

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Now Recruiting Minnesota Reading Corps Literacy Tutors
Now Recruiting Minnesota Reading Corps Literacy Tutors 150 150 Ivy Marsnik

Would you love to help children grow their reading skills, succeed in school and get extra support? If your answer is yes, you can be trained to serve as a tutor with Minnesota Reading Corps at Way to Grow. Whether you want to explore an educational career, reenter the workforce, or give back to your community, you can succeed as a tutor. Last year, Minnesota Reading Corps provided direct services to over 30,000 children in more than 700 schools across the state.

As a Literacy Tutor, you’ll use strategies that help students believe in themselves and succeed. Positions available include preschool tutors at Way to Grow Preschool Pals and P.A.L.S. Offered four days per week, Preschool Pals is our NAEYC accredited and MN Parent Aware 4-star rated center-based preschool program designed to complement home visits for Way to Grow families. Preschool P.A.L.S. invites the parent into the preschool classroom for parent-child learning time. Both locations offer part time options, and tutors typically serve most of their hours during the regular school day.

In addition to extensive training, tutors will receive on-site support from specially trained school mentors. Tutors come from many backgrounds and include recent high school and college grads, career changers, stay-at-home parents, and retirees. Tutors may earn a living allowance, educational award, federal student loan forbearance, and other benefits, and have the chance to make a real difference in the life of a child.

To apply or learn more about the research based programs, position qualifications, and benefits, visit MinnesotaReadingCorps.org. Questions? Contact recruitment@servemnaction.org or 866-859-2825.

Invest in Us

Invest in Us 150 150 Ivy Marsnik
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Building a Strong Community
Building a Strong Community 150 150 Ivy Marsnik

This month, our Preschool Pals focused on building a strong community.  Each area of the classroom was transformed to represent a place in the community.  The snack area served as a restaurant, the manipulative center was a construction site,  the science center became a hospital, the group area was the city hall, and the writing center was the local post office.  As students visited different pillars in their community, they participated in a variety of activities enhancing our curriculum.  “We did two cooking activities the kids really enjoyed,” Lead Teacher, Mr. Eka tells us. “After the children practiced identifying the different fruits and vegetables at our grocery store, we read The Ugly Vegetables and made a vegetable stew. Following suit, after reading The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza, we made personal pizzas.”  I’m sure you can guess which recipe was the classroom favorite!

20141212_150332The preschoolers also took part in a science experiment, dissecting eggs!  Going along with Humpty Dumpty, some of the preschool friends suggested gluing the eggs back together. “For art this week, in addition to our letter of the week, we made community signs such as stop signs and traffic lights that we posted around the room. We also drew fire fighters in action, extinguishing realistic fire paintings.” 20141217_142838

Each student played in the sensory table which was filled with packing peanuts. After searching for community helpers, the children played a matching game, pairing them with where they work. At our writing center, children traced words for our community helpers and completed a tricky maze connecting their community workers with their vehicles. Wrapping up this week’s activity, the class made posters of what they want to be when they grow up.  To Mr. Eka’s delight, “teacher” was the most popular career choice!

 

 

 

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Preschool Pals Teacher Lights the Way
Preschool Pals Teacher Lights the Way 150 150 Ivy Marsnik

Those of us at Way to Grow have always seen Mr. Eka, our Preschool Pals lead teacher, as an excellent educator; but this week, the word is out!  As this week’s recipient of WCCO’s Excellent Educator Award, it is no secret that Mr. Eka radiates a very special light from within, a gift positively impacting his students’ lives day in and day out.  We are honored to have Mr. Eka on our team and could not be more excited to see all of his talents, hard work and dedication being recognized!  Thank you, Eka for all you do to ensure every child has an equal opportunity to succeed in school and life.

Take a step into Eka’s classroom and catch a glimpse of him in action by watching the video below!

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Breaking ground on the new PALS classroom
Breaking ground on the new PALS classroom Way to Grow

We broke ground on our new P.A.L.S. classroom at Urban Ventures in the Colin Powell Youth Leadership Center with sponsors, families, friends, staff and – of course – cake on Wednesday, April 9. The Redleaf Family Foundation is funding this new partnership, so Rhoda cut the ribbon with a shiny pair of yellow children’s scissors before everyone toured the beautiful classroom.

Here’s lead classroom teacher Meredith Skalko reporting on how the program is going so far:

“(The south side) P.A.L.S. is off and running! We have started Family Fridays programming while we patiently await our license application to be approved by the City of Minneapolis. We have had a really great response so far – 16 participants at our first Friday class, 23 at our second, and 26 at our third. It is really exciting to see the parent-child piece of the program underway. Parents and children are playing together, talking together, and learning together, which is really what Way to Grow is all about. I am looking forward to discovering the best ways to tie the preschool and parent-child components of the program together and to see how involving parents in their children’s learning first-hand can help foster school readiness and success.”

Assistant teacher Craig Allen thought the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony was enjoyable, but added that “the real magic happened two days later” at the third parent/child class. He is impressed and pleased that the kids have already grasped sharing, self-control, quiet voices and playing nicely with their new friends – all important skills for school success.

The next exciting endeavor for the preschoolers and their families – 59 of them, in fact – is a field trip to the Minnesota Children’s Theatre on April 25 to see “Balloonacy.” We can’t wait to hear how that goes. For now, click here for a full Facebook gallery of photos from the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony.

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With a Little Help from our Friends
With a Little Help from our Friends 150 150 Way to Grow

On Friday afternoon, a group of volunteers helped install our new Preschool PALS location on the campus of Urban Ventures in South Minneapolis. It was tough for everyone not to get distracted by all the fun books and games, but we managed to assemble, sort, and install most everything we’ll need. Thanks especially to the young gents from the Phi Kappa Sigma Fraternity at the University of Minnesota.

This preschool, titled P.A.L.S. (Parent-Child Activities Lead to School Readiness), will have a particular focus on getting parents involved in their child’s preschool education. The room next to the preschool will be home a lending library for books and other resource geared toward parents.

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Twelve Days of Growing: Day 4
Twelve Days of Growing: Day 4 150 150 Way to Grow

4 – 4-Stars Shining. Way to Grow’s Preschool Pals is a 4-Star Parent Aware rated preschool, meaning it meets benchmarks for the following best practices:

Exemplifies a truly engaged school readiness partner for parents
Ongoing assessment of child’s progress
Continually adapts lesson plans and goals to meet individual needs
Regularly updates parents on child’s progress
Trained on children’s developmental disabilities
Communicates across cultures
Receives and documents on-going childhood-related education

We hope you’ll consider a making a gift to Way to Grow a part of your holiday giving. Your tax-deductible gift will continue to fund our Great by Eight initiative, which provides outcome-based, holistic, year-round, language-to-language, early education programming to the families and children we serve.

To make a contribution, please click here or phone Melissa Meyer at (612) 874-4740.  To learn more about our programs, please explore our website.

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