PANAMA CITY — Early Education and Care Inc. and other local organizations joined hands Tuesday morning to celebrate and support children in the community.
The organization — in collaboration with Healthy Start, Children’s Home Society, the Bay County Library, the Department of Health in Bay County and Sam’s — bused in about 200 preschool students in the Head Start programs at several local schools for its 15th annual Children’s Week celebration at McKenzie Park.
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Participating children made handprints with their classes to display at the celebration. Made with paint or cut out of construction paper, the handprints were labeled with names and ages and strung on ribbons or arranged on posters. They represented the “joining of hands” in support of children, according to Janice Flowers, Head Start director for Early Education and Care Inc.
The program also focused on literacy, with event staff reading Aubrey Penn’s children’s book “The Kissing Hand” to the students and giving out copies of it and other books in both English and Spanish.
“Throughout the state of Florida, today is recognized as Children’s Day,” Flowers said. “At the [state] Capitol, they’re hanging hands all through the rotunda, talking about issues that are affecting our children, and we feel here in Panama City we need to let our community know that our children are so very important, that our families are important, and we are working in this community to make sure that those issues are also known.”
Those issues include health care and education, both of which Head Start addresses, Flowers said.
Check back Wednesday morning for a video.
