Project Description
FOUR PILLARS OF FAMILY LITERACY
PARENT AND CHILD TOGETHER
During Parent and Child Together (PACT) Time®, parents and children interact through meaningful activities while teachers are able to coach and support parents by modeling and encouraging. The child drives the activities, but the parents learn how to follow their lead and foster learning. The reciprocal learning provides parents and children a chance to become lifelong partners in education.
PACT time builds the parent’s confidence in implementing newly learned best practices to engage their child in learning. This is key to improving their home learning environment. When parents use the skills, strategies, and materials in their homes, we see the greatest improvement in their child’s development. The home learning environment has the greatest influence on a child’s success in school, even more than attending a high-quality preschool or the education of the mother (Melhuish, Phan, Sylva, Sammons, Siraj-Blatchford, & Tarrart, 2008).
GOALS FOR PARTICIPANTS
PARENTS WILL:
Learn fun educational activities to support kindergarten readiness
Build communication skills
Build positive and enriching parent-child interactions
Form reasonable expectations for their children
Emphasize literacy activities in everyday life situations
Practice skills, activities and strategies learned in Parent Education
CHILDREN WILL:
See their parent as a teacher
Engage in activities with their parent
Gain self-confidence with completing new activities
Improve their language and literacy skills
TEACHERS WILL:
Assist parents in recognizing, affirming, and increasing their strengths as parents
Enhance parents’ knowledge of child development and how they learn
Provide parents with the materials and strategies to support their children’s learning at home
Expose parents to educational activities that they can replicate in the home
Provide a safe and warm atmosphere for parents to practice these newly learned strategies in a supportive environment
Model a wide variety of learning activities
Encourage both the parent and child to have fun learning together
Follow up PACT time with teacher/parent discussion
GRACE PLACE FAMILY LITERACY MODEL®