Published: September 24, 2006 12:36 am            

Children’s program gets grant

• $140,000 provides bulk of funding for Smart Start

Smart Start Payne County has received a $140,000 grant from Smart Start Oklahoma that will go toward several projects that support children and their families in Payne County.

The grant is the organization’s main source of funding, Executive Director Regina Hall said.

“We would not be able to do what we do without it,” she said.

Some of the projects that will benefit from the grant are: the Child Care Accreditation Project that aids agencies in receiving accreditation; the Museum Without Walls program that works with the Stillwater Children’s Museum; and the Raising a Reader read-aloud book bag program.

The non-profit organization, formerly known as Stillwater Area Success By 6, targets children 6 years old and younger and is one of the 26 Stillwater Area United Way funded agencies.

The Raising a Reader program is the organization’s biggest project and is aimed at encouraging parents to read to their child, Hall said.

The organization was the first in Oklahoma to implement the program and is still the leader in the state with an estimated 880 children using the program in schools, she added.

In the program, children get four books to take home and read with their parents throughout the school year. At the end of the 26-week program, children will have read about 104 books, Hall said.

The program is implemented in all Stillwater and Perkins pre-K classrooms, Kids Under Construction day care, Parents as Teachers in Perkins and all Headstart centers in Payne County.

“Kids were going to school unprepared and unexposed (to reading),” Hall said. “(With the program) kids get excited and want to be read to.”

        

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