The adage is that you can’t teach an old dog a new trick, and one local literacy group is taking that cliché to heart by impressing on both parents and students the importance of reading at a young age.

A Cortez non-profit organization, the Pinon Project, has recently taken the lead in developing what is called the "Backpack" or "Tubby" program, a collaborative effort on the part of several local agencies to curb early childhood illiteracy.

"We are going to put together 80 [educational] tubs that will be made up of materials to help preschool children develop the necessary skills needed to be successful in school," says Virginia Howey, the Pinon Project director.

Howey says that monetary support for the program’s materials will come from the Scottish Rites Masons. "They needed a non-profit organization to donate the funding through, and the Tubby Program was a good fit with the Pinon Project’s family literacy program that has been running for three years now," she said.

The family literacy program is one that helps parents get their GED, technical training or equivalent higher education degree as well as tries to strengthen the parent/child relationship, says Howey.

"For the first year, the program is going to serve 60 families who will receive one tub a month for an entire year," Howey said. The extra 20 tubs will be rotated into the program when other tubs are in need of cleaning or replenishing.

"Each tub will be based on a theme that will appeal to young children and will contain a variety of educational toys, games, puzzles, books, puppets etc.," Howey said. "All of these materials are designed to work a child’s fine motor skills, gross motor skills, problem-solving abilities and language development."

Before entering into the Tubby Program, which will be available through Butler Head Start, Trinity Lutheran Preschool, the Pinon Project and Ute Mountain Ute Day Care, parents must first make the commitment to spend at least 15 minutes each night with their child working with the materials.

Prior to handing out any of the tubs, says Howey, staff members at the four involved organizations will receive 12 hours of training on how to best utilize the learning materials. These staff members will then pass this knowledge along to parents during a short training period so that they can better help their kids, she said.

"Each child will also take the DIAL III developmental screening test before and after going through the program so that we can measure their growth," said Howey.