A group of moms and dads sat around a huge circular rug inside the Keatley Center Tuesday morning, trying to hold energetic bundles of preschool energy in their laps.

Parents as Teachers educator Jill Robinson asked the children what a cow sounded like. And a toddler chorus responded with a cacophonous: “Moo! Moo! Moo!”

For the next hour, Ms. Robinson showed both parent and youngster through song and play the value of music in their child’s life. How music helps with language development motor and social skills.

“Music uses all four quadrants of the brain,” she told the group.

That was just one of many services provided by Parents as Teachers. It’s a program that’s designed to empower and teach parents of young children to better understand their roles in their child’s development, said Debbie Kunz, local Parents as Teachers coordinator.

“Our philosophy is, parents are their child’s first and best teacher,” she said.

Parents as Teachers began in 1981 as a Missouri pilot project for first-time parents of newborns. But the concept was developed in the 1970s after research showed that greater family involvement in children’s learning is crucial to a child’s development and learning ability.

During the 1980s, Parents as Teachers was implemented in all Missouri school districts, as well as expanding nationwide and to some foreign countries. Currently there are more than 3,000 Parents as Teachers services across the country and abroad.

The St. Joseph Parents as Teachers program is funded by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). It serves more than 3,000 families, with children from birth to 5 years of age, in the St. Joseph area. It employs 26 parent educators who do home visits, group meetings, screenings, play dates, referrals and provide other support services free, regardless of income. Parents as Teachers is also capable of providing services for the Hispanic population.

The local Parents as Teachers receives $650,000 yearly from DESE to funds its programs. But the organization took a $60,000 cut in funding this year, Ms. Kunz said.

“We’re trying not to decrease our services at all, so we’re tightening our belt a little bit here and there,” she said. “We’re not making any change to services that we’re offering to families.”

She said the program is essential in helping children be ready to enter school. It’s also beneficial in remediating problems at a young age, rather than later when they’re much harder to correct.

“Our public needs to know that it is important that we spend money at the beginning, rather than spend money when it’s too late,” Ms. Kunz said. “Because it’s a lot more expensive to pay money to remediate than it is to pay money to prevent a problem.”

Miles and Meagan Schellhorn entered their 1-year-old son, Mason, in Parents as Teachers shortly after he was born. The young couple said they feel the program has been beneficial to their son’s growth.

“I think it’s important, especially with us being young parents, that we use all the resources available to us for our child,” Mr. Schellhorn said.

Mrs. Schellhorn said their son enjoys the interaction with other children. “Might as well get involved as much as I can for him, so he can have a good future,” she said.

For more information, call the Parents as Teachers office at 671-4300.

Alonzo Weston can be reached at alonzow@npgco.com.