Learning and Growing is an early-childhood literacy program that focuses on home-based child-care providers. Home-based child-care providers make up the largest group of childcare givers in our region with an estimated 486 of these centers in Allegheny County alone. While these home-based centers represent the largest share of child-care providers, they have the least amount of resources available to them. In order to provide these much needed resources and services, the Education Department has developed Learning and Growing, an early-childhood literacy program that provides training and resources to child-care providers. While home-based providers are the primary focus of this program, it is not limited to them. The resources available through this program are useful to any child-care giver, parent or grandparent who is dedicated to giving children in their care education-rich activities during their formative years.

The foundation of this program is an Education Department-developed literacy kit that provides child-care givers with a wealth of information and resources for early childhood literacy instruction. The Education Department has also produced a training video that accompanies this kit featuring Maggie Stewart, also known as Mayor Maggie of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." This video provides instructions on how to effectively use the information in the kit. In addition, the Education Department purchases developmentally appropriate activity books from Fred Rogers' Family Communications Inc. and children's storybooks from Beginning with Books for these kits.

After three years of this program, the Education Department has trained and provided kits to 750 home-based providers in the region, and has established a network of home-based providers from around the region.

Stories Start Action is a language arts workshop that visits participating elementary schools once a month during the school year. This program is designed to meet the needs of Title I schools and teachers that require programs that strengthen core subjects and address academic issues that caused the school to be designated for school improvement. Additionally, Stories Start Action takes into account that not all kids learn in the same way, so it teaches to students from each learning style.

Each Stories Start Action program year has a theme. In each theme-based workshop, the students engage in a story, complete an activity and receive a free book to help them build their own personal library. The children also participate in lively discussion about the theme. Themes for the workshops include the importance of reading, personal safety, media literacy and career literacy.

To further reinforce the theme, students are encouraged to apply it to personal experience. This encouragement helps the children develop and continue to have a love for reading and learning. It also shows them the important role that reading plays throughout life, and that learning can be fun and can take many forms. Through this program, students get to experiment with new and fun ways of learning. They gain valuable knowledge about the importance of education, and every aspect of this program includes reading activities. Additionally, careers are introduced through books and speakers.

In addition to these highly interactive and entertaining learning workshops, we provide an activity kit for each participating school, community center or after-school program. These kits are durable, hard plastic containers containing many fun and educational extension activities that reinforce the themes learned throughout the course of the program. Each kit has divided sections for each month, so teachers can prepare for new workshops and revisit earlier themes. The materials in the kit are timeless, and teachers are encouraged to photocopy them and use them in their daily activities. Examples of these materials include creating stories from a story starter, making maps of their neighborhood and following recipes.

Stories Start Action also engages parents in their children's education. Each month parents receive a newsletter telling them about the different activities their child is participating in, and giving them tips about what parents can do to enhance their child's education at home. Additionally, we encourage parents to attend workshops so they too can participate in this high-quality program with their child or children.

Look Out for the Arts is an arts integration program that is designed to improve the reading, writing, speaking and listening skills of fourth grade students in Title I schools. In partnership with WQED fm89.3, Look Out for the Arts is an interactive program that introduces classical music to children. Special attention is given to minority and underserved youth and those with mental, physical or emotional challenges.

Each participating school receives two workshops per semester. The first workshop introduces children to the program through a short visual presentation that provides them with "fun facts" about composers both contemporary and historical. After the presentation, children participate in a "Family Feud"-style game during which they are asked questions about the composers covered in the presentation. The second workshop focuses on building basic skills and features Pennsylvania academic standards-based language-arts activities such as vocabulary exercises, student discussions, writing exercises, phonetic exercises and student reports. Materials and activities are left with classroom teachers for use as extension activities.

At the end of each year, participating classes visit WQED for a program finale during which they have the opportunity to tour WQED's classical radio station, meet students from other schools and participate in additional age- appropriate language-arts activities.