2024 marks the 50th anniversary of Early Childhood Family Education in Minnesota. The mission of ECFE has always been to strengthen families. They provide programs supporting the healthy growth and development children.

Jen Jaros, the Early Childhood Family Education Coordinator for Duluth Public Schools, says today is all about celebrating families.

“Our program is birth to age five. We are early childhood education as well as parent education,” Jaros said. “Children benefit from lots of exciting activities, music and movement and finger plays. We really look at parents as a child’s first and most important teacher. We’re always learning and developing even into an adulthood and that’s why parent education is so important.

Jaros also says they are more improvements to providing early childhood education near Washington Washington Junior High School.

“A really exciting thing to talk about right now is that we worked really hard over the past couple of years. We worked with some partnerships to put in a new playground down at the Washington Center. Just for children birth to birth the age three really or age five,” Jaros said. “There is another playground there but it was for big kids. So we’ll be commemorating that in the next month or so. We’re really excited about it.”

Jaros says when it comes to brain development 90% of a child’s brain is developed by the time they turn five years old. Which is why Jaros says educating children during when they are young is so important.

For more information about the Duluth Early Childhood Family Education you can read more here. Also for other stories with education you can read more here.