Early Childhood Center

HPS Early Childhood Center

Location: 901 Ida Avenue, Hattiesburg, MS 39401
Phone: 601-582-6672
Fax: 601-582-6667

 

Early Literacy is essential to developing reading and writing skills necessary to communicate effectively. The goal of the HPSD Early Childhood Center is to ensure children gain early literacy skills for success in grade school and beyond. The center offers early learning, standards-based activities to help children and parents learn and grow together in a fun way, such as:

  • Fun, Standards-based Learning Centers
  • Story Time and Literacy Instruction 
  • Parent Trainings
  • Pre-K Screenings and Registration 
  • Community Early Learning Partnerships

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Readers are Leaders: Reading with your child is one of the key fundamental skills to school readiness. Children learns so many things from reading aloud with adults. Reading helps develop and build vocabulary skills. Books are useful tools to introduce number, letter, color, and shape concepts. Children develop better listening and memory skills from reading with adults. Children learn about the environment and world around them through reading. Reading aloud with parents and other adults helps children make different connections with and to books.
Helpful Reading Tips from www.Kidshealth.org:

  • Cuddling or reading with your child in your lap helps them feel safe, warm, and connected to you.
  • Read with expression, changing your voice higher or lower where it's appropriate or using different voices for different characters.
  • Stop once in a while ans ask questions or make comments on the pictures or text. (Where's the kitty? There he is! What a cute, black kitty.") Your child might not be able to respond yet, but this lays the groundwork for doing so later on.
  • Sing nursery rhymes, make funny animal sounds, or bounce your baby on your knee - anything that shows that reading is fun.
  • Little ones love - and learn from - repetition, so don't be afraid of reading the same books over and over. When you do so, repeat the same emphasis each time as you would with a familiar song.
  • Teach your child how to properly care for books and about different types of books (picture books, board books, paperback books, fiction and non-fiction books).