Chautauqua Opportunities Inc.’s Early Education/Head Start Services:

• Supports the development of the whole child. In addition to providing early learning experiences to help children improve their academic skills, Head Start promotes children’s physical wellness and social-emotional development; important factors in school readiness and future academic success.

• Supports the goal of Head Start to help every child succeed in school. Head Start recognizes the connection between children’s oral health and their overall wellness. When children’s oral health suffers, so does their ability to learn. Untreated tooth decay can cause pain and infections. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports  tooth decay (dental caries) affects more children in the United States than any other chronic infectious disease.

• Recognizes that parents and families are the first and most important teacher of their child. Head Start encourages parents and families to become involved in their children’s education, both in and out of the classroom.

• Provides Parenting Classes to families with children named Positive Parenting Solutions. These classes are offered frequently throughout the program year. This curriculum helps parents to utilize similar techniques used in the classroom and maintain consistency for the child between the classroom and home.

• Recognizes that children do best in life when they grow up with the active, positive involvement of both a mother and father. Whatever the measure—physical and emotional health, educational achievement, behavior, substance abuse, crime or delinquency—children are more likely to lead healthy, productive lives when both their mother and father are actively involved in their lives in positive ways.

• Educates on putting babies to sleep on their backs  reducing the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). One of the biggest threats to an infant’s sleep safety is SID), also known as “crib death“ or “cot death.” SIDS is the sudden and unexplained death of an infant who is younger than one year.

• Recognizes that children’s immunizations have been called the most important public health intervention in history, after safe drinking water. It has saved millions of lives over the years and prevented hundreds of millions of cases of disease.