• What is Success By 6? 
• What are the Goals of Success By 6? 
• What are the roles of Salina Area United Way? 
• Asset Building Activities for Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers 

What is Success By 6?

Success By 6 is PREVENTION: Insuring healthy early child development prevents serious problems in later years.

Success By 6 is INVESTMENT: Community resources are leveraged and pay dividends as young children access services and opportunities to enter school ready to learn.

Success By 6 is COLLABORATION: Partnerships between public and private organizations combine expertise and resources.

Mission:  To develop and pursue collaborative, preventative strategies resulting in Salina area families and children (0-6) receiving comprehensive services to prepare children to enter school healthy, well nurtured and prepared to succeed.

What are the Goals of Success By 6?

• Childcare and Education: Purpose: To improve children's overall physical, mental and emotional health by supporting improvements in childcare quality and continuity of care.  Success by 6 believes that all children from birth through age 6 should have access to high quality childcare and educational experiences.

Goals: 
1. Develop tuition assistance programs to improve childcare professional development
2. Create a wage bonus program to improve provider retention
3. Improve wages and benefits for childcare providers
4. Encourage participation in childcare professional development programs
5. Respond to training needs and requests by developing training to meet providers needs
           Early childhood mental health/behavior issues
           ASSET development in ages 0-6
           Creativity 
6. Improve the quality and availability of childcare
7. Increase parent awareness of ASSET development, mental health issues in young children and developmentally appropriate expectations. 
8. Encourage bilingual childcare providers to participate in professional development and wage bonus programs.
9. Improve childcare providers' access and training in fine arts to encourage creativity in children 0-6.

Healthcare and Education: Purpose: To improve children's health and school readiness by providing health support services and parental health education.
Goals:
1. Continue immunization program emphasis and accessibility.
2. Improve access to health and developmental screenings. 
3. Increase access to home visitations programs.
4. Increase awareness of early childhood mental health issues.
5. Improve access to prenatal health services.
6. Reduce early childhood accident rates and improve preventative parent education (SAFE KIDS).
7. Increase accessibility to dental services for uninsured and Medicaid preschool children.

Family Support and Education: Purpose: To improve children's social, cognitive and behavioral school readiness by improving parenting skills.
Goals:
1. Expand accessibility to Parents as Teachers parenting programs.
2. Support and encourage early literacy programs for parents and children 0-6.
3. Improve accessibility for transportation.
4. Expand teen parent support.
5. Support teenage pregnancy reduction efforts.
6. Promote and expand accessibility to parenting skill development.
7. Promote and increase accessibility of bilingual parenting training.
8. Address availability of bilingual parenting materials.
9. Provide access to translation/interpreter services to immigrant parents.
10. Provide Hispanic families with daily ESL classes via Saline ACCESS Television. 

Community Awareness and Advocacy: Purpose: To develop and pursue collaborative, preventative strategies resulting in community awareness and mobilization on early childhood and family issues. 
Goals:
1. Develop a clear and strong message about the importance of early childhood development.
2. Increase the number of community members who become actively involved in supporting young children and families on both an individual and public policy level.
3. Develop and strengthen public policy to support families and nurture children.
4. Promote the Developmental Assets in parent/provider training for children 0-6.
5. Inform community of early childhood needs and develop community resources to meet those needs.
6. Develop and convey an effective, community-wide preventative safety message. 
7. Develop promotional campaigns to gain community-wide notice and support for parenting programs, safety issues and special events focused on children 0-6. 
8. Develop and promote community-wide strategies and policies to address community cultural barriers affecting families and children 0-6. 
9. Provide a community volunteer corps to tutor bilingual five and six year olds in prereading skills and oral reading practice.
 

What are the roles of Salina Area United Way?

Convener: United Way works to convene leaders from all sectors of the community.

Facilitator: United Way helps to facilitate meetings and events.

Funder: United Way provides support and funding for the initiative, assists with grant writing, seeks funds from businesses or corporations and uses its own grant process to support innovative strategies in early childhood.

Asset Building Activities for Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers

Asset #25 Reading for Pleasure

Parents and other adults read to all children, make reading fun, encourage participation.  Preschool and elementary age children read with adults at least 30 minutes each day and also enjoy reading on their own.
 

• Start reading to infants as they are born.  Read aloud parts of the daily newspaper, a magazine, a novel, poems, or children's stories.  It doesn't matter what you read - for infants, the sound of your voice and the quiet time you share is most important.
• Make books a part of everyday life for infants.  Give them board books and touch and feel books like Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt.  Infants especially like books with simple rhymes or pictures of animals or baby faces.
• Snuggle with infants as you look at books together.  This helps make reading pleasurable.

• When you're sharing a book with young toddlers, look at the pictures together before you read the works.  Have the toddlers talk about what they see to help them build language skills.  As toddlers grow older and are learning how to listen, start reading parts of the story.
• Let toddlers turn the pages. Expect him to skip pages or want to look at books upside down or backward.  Don't worry about reading the "right" way - just let him have fun with the book.
• Fill a basket or bucket full of books for toddlers.  When it's reading time, ask them to pick tow or three books they'd like to share.

• Let preschoolers' reading skills develop at their own pace.  Don't push them to start reading before they're ready.  Teach them the basics in fun ways.  for example, say, "Can you tell me what letter is on the sign over there?"
• Go on a reading hunt and look for things with words on them.  At the grocery store, preschoolers will find words on magazines and newspapers, food packages, advertisements, money shopping lists, and more.
• Find picture books that don't have any words on the page, such as Time Flies by Eric Rohamann.  Ask preschoolers to tell you a story to match the pictures.