November is National Family Engagement Month. As educators, we’re often focused on supporting children’s academic, social, and emotional growth in the classroom. But, it’s important to remember that families are a child’s first teacher. This month, we’re celebrating how to take learning home and support families’ opportunities to impact their child’s development and learning through the power of interactions.

As part of your family engagement initiatives this month (and beyond!), consider how you can help families understand and leverage their interactions at home. To help, check out these tips and tricks below that you can share with the families in your early childhood program!

Create an Environment where Literacy Thrives

A language, and literacy-rich environment can help to promote the development of literacy skills. This idea of a literacy-rich environment can extend beyond the classroom and into the home in three quick ways.

Use Daily Routines for Math Exploration

Daily tasks are full of opportunities to explore and practice math concepts, like counting, sorting, comparing. Try these ideas to make daily routines into an opportunity for learning.

The tips and tricks above can help families be more intentional in supporting learning at home, but the best advice to give is to encourage families to play and have fun together.

While playing, children aren’t just learning about themselves and the world around them. They get to interact with one another and the adults who care for them. And, we know it’s through those quality interactions that children can form relationships and feel safe, which is the key to better learning outcomes.

Teachstone Celebrates and Supports Family Engagement

Whether you’re simply celebrating and supporting the families you work with, or you’re working to adhere to specific Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) and Head Start Family Engagement policies and requirements, we’re here to help.

We are excited to announce a new workshop, Meaningful Interactions at Home, which supports your family engagement initiatives, by helping families turn everyday moments into opportunities for learning.

Designed as a one-hour online family workshop, Meaningful Interactions at Home:

• • • Gives infant to pre-K families strategies and materials to meaningfully interact with their children at home,
      
    • Creates a consistent bridge of effective interactions between school and home,
      
    • And, supports the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Family Engagement requirements and Head Start’s Family Engagement Standards required in many programs.