El Hogar’s Infant, Toddlers, & Twos program offers high-quality early childhood care, education and family support for infants, toddlers, and their families. Using Creative Curriculum for Infants, Toddlers & Twos, our teachers engage their students with a variety of fun activities that focus on several key areas such as social/emotional, physical, cognitive, and language development.
Each child in the Infant, Toddlers, & Twos program is assigned to one of our three Family Support Specialists (FSS). The role of the FSS is to support parent/child interaction, help families understand how to support their child’s development, and support overall family well-being. The FSS is an advocate for the child and family, helping them to build relationships with teachers in the classroom and to connect with needed community services.
Important to maintaining strong relationships between our teachers and student families is El Hogar’s home visit service. Lead teachers and assigned Family Support Specialists will conduct the first home visit within 15 days of a new child’s enrollment and will follow up with a second visit six months later. These twice yearly visits allow the teacher and FSS to better understand home dynamics and provide parents an opportunity to discuss their children’s individual needs in a safe and comfortable environment.
El Hogar is dedicated to supporting its parents through various channels. To achieve this goal, Family Support Specialists host monthly parent support groups for the Toddlers & Twos families. At these meetings, staff is able to guide parents toward building on their own strengths and capabilities to promote healthy development of their children. Using the Baby TALK model, which has a mission to positively impact child development and nurture healthy parent/child relationships during the critical early years of childhood, El Hogar establishes a system of collaboration and communication to eliminate barriers for its families.
Additionally, the Infant, Toddlers, & Twos program is proud to work with the Ounce of Prevention Fund in an effort to improve its programming. Coordinators, teachers, Family Support Specialists and Infant & Toddler Specialists attend training conducted by the Ounce on a monthly basis. Monthly meetings bring together staff from various agencies to facilitate collaborative discussions around best practices, industry innovations, curriculum development, and classroom assessments.