It is great to see and visit Santa Claus each year. He adds greatly to the holiday season and he is a special friend especially of the children.

Each year, Santa comes to Sequim in many different disguises. One especially good one is at the Parenting Matters Foundation and First Teacher’s “Breakfast with Santa,” set this year for Saturday, Dec. 1 (see details below).

You can have breakfast, enjoy the holiday music and talk with friends. Your little one can talk with Santa, have his or her picture taken with Santa, have breakfast and receive a book from Santa — that is a super morning.

Some of you may not know about Parenting Matters Foundation and the First Teacher program. This program has been in existence for 30 years in Sequim. It began when Ken Anderson, then the superintendent of the Sequim School District, invited new people in Sequim to come for a tour of the schools. After the tour I met him at a high school game, and he mentioned he felt we needed a program for parents of children who hadn’t yet entered school, to help them learn how to help their child be ready for kindergarten.

That sounded like a good idea, so I volunteered to help.

Little did I know how much this program would expand in the coming years.

Two community volunteers, Janet Proebstel and myself, and one school district counselor, Sharon Witt, began the First Teach program. It wasn’t very good at the beginning. We began in Sequim with a newsletter we called “First Teacher,” which we sent out to some parents we found who had children under the age of 5. Soon it was clear that we needed to do the same thing in Port Angeles and then out to Neah Bay and Forks.

After a time we saw the need to do a newsletter for parents who only spoke Spanish. Within a few years we found ourselves sending out over 750 First Teacher Newsletters each month.

We then began to help other districts. The suggestion of one of the districts was that we needed to help parents even after their child entered kindergarten. So we started a program for parents of children already in school. We began a newsletter to help parents of students in kindergarten, then first, second and third grade, then fourth and fifth grade, then middle school, then high school — and then even one for grandparents raising grandchildren.

The comments from parents were enthusiastic and encouraging. We could no longer just call our program First Teacher because we were serving so many more than parents of preschool age children. We then began to work under the title of Parenting Matters Foundation.

Since our long time ago beginning, we have also sought other ways to finance the program. Originally school districts paid the cost of the newsletters that were sent out monthly. Then a major cutback in funds from the state to individual school districts hit. With limited funding, we needed to cut back to serving parents of preschool children.

We now had to find funds to keep the program available to at least that one group. We also sought other ways to finance this program to keep it free to all parents.

Our biggest change we made at this time was to send First Teacher newsletter by email. We have expanded the program in many ways by doing parenting classes, enlarging our presence on the internet, and by having weekly meeting with guest readers for the children and also activities for the children at the Sequim Boys & Girls Club.

Grants have been a significant financial help to us. We have received grants from local service club, from the state and from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which have been significant financial help. We are always looking for other ways to finance this program which we hear has helped so many children.

The Breakfast with Santa is one of those ways. We hope you can join us at Sequim Middle School between 8:30-11:30 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 1. Tickets are $5 for children of ages 2-10, $10 for anyone 11 years old or older. There are some free tickets available for those who cannot afford to buy them. Call 360-681-2250. We know you will enjoy it.

So while you enjoy having breakfast with Santa know that you are helping a parent learn about some new ways to help their child be ready for kindergarten. We appreciate your support and welcome your involvement. Hopefully we will see you on Dec. 1.

Cynthia Martin is the founder of the First Teacher program and former executive director of Parenting Matters Foundation, which publishes newsletters for parents, caregivers and grandparents. To reach current First Teacher Executive Director Nicole Brewer, email nicole@firstteacher.org or call 360-681-2250.