Home-based early childhood education program draws interest

The town of Windsor offers a home-based pre-kindergarten program that helps parents and children have a successful early childhood education and environment at home, where parents are the primary role models as teachers for their own children.

Although the program also services private and public pre-K programs, its main thrust is to bring resources, information, books and activities into private homes so parents can develop and shape their young children's minds. Parents or guardians and pregnant women or teens who live in Windsor may participate for free.

Erin Quast, Jennifer Mitchell and Kathy Kopacz serve as the role models for the local “Parents as Teachers” programs. Quast is the program leader and Mitchell and Kopacz are teachers who go into people's homes by invitation. The program honors and guards its participants' privacy, especially since they enter private homes.

Mitchell, a former certified elementary school teacher, has three children of her own, ages 12, 9 and 2. She is one of the two parent educators who goes out to families and runs activities at homes as well as at community centers. She offers information about potty-training, temper tantrums, food and nutrition, language development, gross and fine motor skills, bedtime routines, literacy, math skills and much more.

“We also refer people to Health and Human Services if they ask or need these added services, such as the Birth-to-3 Program,” said Mitchell. “Most of what we do is give out information and handouts, as well as a children's books, authentic literature and the classics, to each child in a household every time parent-teachers visit.”

The center is headquartered at the Oliver Ellsworth Center in Windsor. Quast writes the grant application each year that is required to get funding from the state. The Family Resource Center in Windsor and other towns in Connecticut operate under a Connecticut State Department of Education-funded grant.

“It is required as part of the grant that we run a home visitation program and use the Parents as Teachers model, a national program,” said Quast. The school districts write the applications for the grant. There are 62 state-funded family resource centers with the Parents as Teachers program throughout the 169 municipalities in Connecticut. 

The program is free to Windsor parents with children up to 5 years of age.

“Jennifer Mitchell and Kathy Kopacz go to the house or will teach you and meet you in public places such as the library or here at the resource center,” Quast said. “They go to the home or the centers for an hour. They bring books and activities. Then, they discuss topics with the parents and bring information about how to build skills and programs to meet the family's needs.

“We have a lot of parents who just like having another mother to speak with,” Quast added. “Our parents are trained by a national program. They also go to home daycare providers, spend an hour there, run an activity and discuss with the adults other things to do with the children.”

Interested parents and guardians may call certified parent educators Jennifer Mitchell and Kathy Kopacz at 860-687-2070, ext. 146, for more information.