Each year Miss Ruby’s Kids recruits families with two-year-olds to participate in our two-year program. Families are paired with an Early Learning Specialist (ELS) who, whenever possible, resides in their community and shares their language and cultural background. The ELS will visit each family twice-weekly in their home, at a time convenient for them. During the first session of the week, a book or educational toy will be gifted to the family and used to model reading, conversation, and play activities designed to stimulate parent-child interaction, develop language and literacy skills, and build school readiness. Each gift comes with a curriculum guide sheet with additional literacy and educational activities for the parent and child to engage in until their next visit. During the second session of the week, the review session, the ELS will again model reading, conversation, and play activities, encouraging parents to engage their children with the book or toy and to ask questions, while providing encouragement and praise for all their efforts. Through this process, parent-child verbal interaction increases, and parents/primary caregivers learn new approaches to parenting, discover how to create literacy-rich home environments, and prepare to be their children’s academic advocates. Children learn early on the joy of reading and develop language, literacy, and social-emotional skills that are critical to school readiness and school success.

Family child care, or home-based care, provided in the community is often the most available, convenient, and cost-effective child care option. Family child care providers work very long hours for little pay and often have limited access to quality training and professional development opportunities that are affordable, convenient, and relevant to their daily work environment.

Miss Ruby’s Kids utilizes The ParentChild+ Family Child Care Model, which increases the knowledge and skills of family child care providers. The model builds on extensive experience in developing language, literacy, and learning-rich home environments. Similar to our ParentChild + program, Early Learning Specialist complete home visits twice weekly to work one-on-one with child care providers to support school readiness and family engagement for all the children in their care.