WOODFORD CO., Ky. (LEX 18) — Instead of kids riding the bus to school, one Woodford County bus is set to take school to the kids. The Early Learning Bus is a new way to provide education opportunities to little learners in the county.
What our goal will be is to go out there and actually be where the kids are, so the community centers and different aspects of the county,” said Kim Johnson, coordinator of district-wide programs. “I want to be able to showcase what Woodford County Schools can do for families in this county.”
The Early Learning Bus is aimed at reaching kids between the ages of three and five.
“We really would just operate like a preschool classroom within the schools,” said Johnson. “They would have center time, they would have circle time, they would have engagement activities, they would have all kinds of activities for them to do on the bus. We also will have, once it gets warmer obviously, we’ll have some outdoor activities as well that we can do with the kids here.”
The project took about a year and a half and used grants from the Kentucky Department of Eduation’s Office of Special Education and Early Learning (OSEEL). Dr. Josh Rayburn, chief information officer for Woodford County Schools, worked on Fayette County’s STEM bus, and he had an important hand in designing the Early Learning Bus.
“That’s what really got me excited about this,” said Rayburn. “Just repurposing and rethinking something that is not normal. Like you don’t normally see a bus converted into a mobile classroom.”
School officials and members of the Department of Education had an opportunity to take their first look inside the bus before it officially hits the road.
“I hope to have it out within the next couple of months,” said Johnson. “We’ll be, during the school year working on Fridays with the bus, and then during the summer, I’m hoping that we would do two days a week within the community each week for about seven or eight weeks in the summer.”
While the bus is full of fun activities for kids, Woodford County also has something planned for the parents.
“We’re going to give parent education, so while we’re having the kids on the bus, we’ll be outside doing some education with parents and family engagement that way as well.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
