In the past, YELLS has strived to be a hub for the Franklin Gateway community, offering our space as a venue for town hall meetings, community food programs, professional workshops and more. That took a hit during the pandemic as we pivoted to ensure the safety of our youth and staff, but now we’ve reached a point where reopening to the community is once again a possibility! As we begin to welcome more partners back into our building, we would like to spotlight one such partner that has been using the YELLS space weekly to provide valuable early childhood learning services to young children on Franklin Gateway: McCleskey-East Cobb YMCA and the Learning Spaces program!
Learning Spaces is a United Way of Greater Atlanta initiative that provides a free parent/child pre-K program aimed at helping children ages 0-5 learn and grow in an engaging and playful environment. The aim is to equip these young children with the skills needed to thrive in Kindergarten while learning to socialize with other children in a classroom environment. At the same time, parents learn strategies for supporting their child’s learning and build social connections with other families in their community. With funding support through the United Way of Greater Atlanta and coordination by the McCleskey-East Cobb YMCA, we’ve been so blessed to be able to bring this impactful model right here to our Franklin Gateway neighborhood. Since April, Learning Spaces has been using the downstairs space at YELLS to host these learn-and-play sessions every Tuesday morning with diverse lesson plans filled with new experiences for the children!
“Every time we meet, I try to teach the kids something new that they don’t know,” said Learning Spaces Coordinator Maria Daniel. “We do reading time first, and everything is done in English and Spanish. I like to emphasize the key words in English, and have all the kids repeat it. So during story time, if we talk about a lion, we ask what the lion does, and then have them all repeat it in English. After story time, we have crafts where we’ll create something related to what we read. And after that’s done, we do singing and dance time, and that’s usually fun, the kids have a blast.”
Learning Spaces Serving Franklin Gateway Community
The majority of families that attend only speak Spanish at home, and offering Learning Spaces as a bilingual program provides these young children with plenty of opportunities to speak English in a classroom setting while still learning alongside their mothers in their native language. Additionally, Maria says the YELLS space has been a perfect location for the program, giving her the freedom to focus more on exposing the children to new experiences.
“The space, the access to tables, chairs, everything set up, this is ideal! I think they all like to see the different colors on the walls, the artwork, it’s just what a regular classroom is going to look like,” Maria said of the downstairs Afterschool space. “Even getting their hands in paint and getting that feeling. I know at home, they won’t always do that because it’s a mess and it’s a whole preparation at home… So here, that was so much fun to do and working a lot of fine motor skills. They loved it, getting their hands wet with paint, then using the scissors, and then trying to hold the pencil or crayon to write out something really close to their name.”
Learning Spaces also fills an important need in the Franklin Gateway community by providing preschoolers with exposure to educational materials and resources that they may not ordinarily interact with at home. Maria says that she noticed some of the young children didn’t know how to properly use scissors, so they spent time practicing the cutting motions without paper first, and then introducing the paper later. She noted that this could be signs that a child might be behind in his or her social development compared to children that age. But Maria is optimistic that Learning Spaces can help fill those gaps in a child’s early development and prepare them for what’s to come in Kindergarten.
“Sometimes I think I am over-cramming my day, giving them too much to do, but they remember and they pick it up. A mom told me today that her daughter listens to the song that we played here and she does it at the park. She’s actually listening and following the step. So they’re incorporating this into everyday (life), not just Tuesday,” Maria said.
We would like to thank McCleskey-East Cobb Family YMCA and the Learning Spaces staff for facilitating these important child education classes to families in the community, as well as the United Way of Greater Atlanta for making this work possible. YELLS is truly honored to work with Learning Spaces to make this program more accessible for Franklin Gateway families and children. By working together we truly can do more!
Learning Spaces meets every Tuesday at YELLS from 10AM-12PM, and all families with children ages 0-5 are welcome to stop by and attend a class!
