|
When Happy Hands opened for
business on September 4, 1994, we were meeting in a
borrowed room and offered only one program. We have
grown five hundred percent in the last ten years and
today, we have expanded to six programs;
1)
Parent Infant Program
2)
Pre-school Program
3)
Kindergarten Program
4)
Happy Hands Outreach Program – teaching
parents how to read to
their deaf children – free to our
families
5)
Speech AND Language services – free to
our children
6)
Oral and Auditory Training
Our training programs for
teachers and assistant teachers are innovative,
cutting-edge and highly sophisticated. We have a
full-time speech and language pathologist on staff,
and all of our teachers are certified in their areas
of expertise. Some of the specific training that we
offer, as a part of our curriculum are:
1)
The Shared Reading Project –
Bookbags are made available to all parents. They
contain a book and a video of someone signing that
book, as well as activities that go along with it.
Our parents can check as many of these out as they
desire so that they can learn how to sign to their
children and expose them to reading and language.
2) Happy
Hands Book Club – Parents and extended
families are invited to attend bookclub nights where
a book is provided to each family, and a teacher
teaches the family members how to sign (read) to
their deaf child. Parents take the books home and
are more confident in reading with their children.
This helps the families to not be so overwhelmed
with trying to learn to sign all at once.
3) Fairview
Reading – This is specific, specialized and
state-of-the-art training for teachers who teach
reading to deaf children. The primary focus is
using reading strategies that ensure there is
comprehension in reading, not just word recognition.
Back to Contents |
