ODESSA, Texas — Kindergarten readiness, something all parents hope their children have when they walk into their first classroom.
"We're housed out of UT Permian Basin through the college of health sciences and human performance. We're under the department of community and family health and essentially First 5 has 3 free early childhood programs that are designed to help parents help their children reach important developmental milestones, of course get ready for kindergarten," said Mercedes Ojeda, community, family health assistant director.
Thanks to First 5 Permian Basin's HIPPY program, kids in West Texas can have just that.
HIPPY stands for home instruction for parents of preschool youngsters.
It's a curriculum used all across the country, taught by mentors to parents, to instill reading and math skills in their children, early on.
"We try to find our community people, so through HIPPY actually a lot of the educators are actually previous HIPPY parents. They love the program so much, they understood the mission and really wanted to be a part of that," Ojeda said.
And next year's class of about 150 to 200 is already filling up. So you need to hurry. This is the last month to enroll before you're wait listed.
The program is also free. Everything is provided through state and local grant funding.
"It is not easy being a parent, especially in the middle of a pandemic and right after a winter storm in Texas, so if anybody has any questions about how they can get involved, about how we might be able to help support them and their families, they can reach out to us," Ojeda said.
That means your little ones can be ahead of the game and fully prepared for that first day of school.
To find out more about the program, click here.