TUPELO, Miss. (WTVA) -- The Early Childhood Education Center provides pre-kindergarten services for students as they prepare for kindergarten.
Teachers begin looking over their new equipment and furniture Tuesday.
Its furniture made possible by a grant from Title One federal funding.
The new stuff will go to start a thirteenth classroom at the center where pre-kindergarten classes are taught.
This was just the second day on the job for teacher Elizabeth Lair.
She was excited to start a new job with new equipment.
"I'm very excited to be here just to be a part of this school, the ECEC, in this community and I'm just excited," said Lair.
Excited, she says, because students will have some of the latest tools for the classroom which will insure they are getting the same learning experiences that kids across the country are getting.
"This is very important. Because, like I said, it gives us another opportunity for us to serve another group of families and their children. And to prepare them as much as possible for kindergarten," said another teacher, Katie Pannell.
The program, she says, focuses on literacy and kindergarten-readiness.
The equipment was ordered from a company called Hatch which has early childhood education as its primary focus.
Workers came in to set everything up Tuesday.
The school district will, of course, tweak a few things, they say, to meet their own needs.
School officials say that their own surveys indicate that there is a very high demand here in Tupelo for an expansion of the pre-K program.
"Our program is entirely center-based. And so we have lots of furniture and manipulatives that will be used in different centers throughout the classroom. Some of our centers range from a home living area, where children can experience dramatic play," Katie Pannell continued." And lots of pretend. We have a classroom library in each room. We have a writing center and art center. Just lots of different centers in each classroom."
This will be the thirteenth classroom at the ECEC and will include 20 new kids.
The new pre-K classroom will be up and running in January.
