Our Programs
ParentChild+
Early Learning Specialists (ELSs), who share a community connection with families, meet one-on-one with parents and their 24-48 month-old children twice a week. ELSs support parents in preparing their children for academic success, strengthening families and communities through intensive, consistent long-term home visiting.
Volunteer Mentor Program
MRK ParentChild+ Graduates are assigned a volunteer mentor once they enter school. Mentors provide additional supports to the child from grades K-12 in the Georgetown County School District.
Home-Based Childcare
Our Home-Based Child Care Provider Model works with a diverse array of caregivers from Family, Friend and Neighbor to group Family Child Care. Support is extended to all the key adults caring for children before they enter school. Our Early Learning Specialists work with providers, supporting them and the families they care for in building school readiness skills.
Little Ruby’s Libraries
Children of all ages need access to books! Miss Ruby’s Kids supports 16 libraries located throughout various parts of Georgetown County. Children have access to free age-appropriate books and school supplies.
Our Collaborations
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library
Miss Ruby’s Kids serves as the Local Program Partner for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. The Imagination Library provides a hand-selected, age-appropriate, high-quality book each month to registered children from birth to age five.
Triple P Positive Parenting Solutions
Miss Ruby’s Kids staff are trained Triple P Facilitators. Triple P is a parenting and family support system designed to help children to realise their potential. It is designed to be with parents on every step of their journey, providing help and guidance to families when they need it.
Why It Matters
The brain develops the fastest before birth to age 5, with eighty percent of the human brain structure taking shape between ages 0 and 3. When you factor in environmental influences, a child’s development may be hindered during the most critical time. Depending on the nature of these influences, the effects can lead to significant skill gaps between children from different backgrounds by the time they start school. These learning deficits can cause problems in and out of school if not addressed.
For families in Georgetown County, Miss Ruby’s Kids has served as a partner in education, helping to eliminate the achievement gap by reducing barriers to school success. We’ve been planting seeds for 21 years. Seeds of knowledge and hope fertilized with timely support and encouragement. We can’t guarantee the future of each seed, but we cultivate them to the best of our abilities in the time we are given with that individual or family through our programming. We focus on school readiness while incorporating coaching and connection to the community for parents and caregivers. We enter schools to support children as they venture on their path to school success. We help our local childcare heroes as they open their homes to care for children in the community. Through the gift of books, we seek to open eyes and minds to new worlds and experiences.
Today, we must actively prepare for the future by investing in early childhood education programs like those offered at Miss Ruby’s Kids. This investment will directly help Miss Ruby’s Kids provide children with engaging learning opportunities and gifts of high-quality learning materials. The return on investment from early childhood education programs is extraordinary and will have a lasting impact on Georgetown’s youngest learners. Research has shown us:
- If families and caregivers can provide quality early childhood development, children will enter school ready to learn.
- If children start school ready to learn, they are more likely to read at grade level by 3rd grade.
- If children read at grade level by 3rd grade, they’re more likely to graduate high school.
- If children graduate from high school, they are more likely to go on to higher education.