Family Engagement

The children in today's early childhood classroom are more culturally, linguistically, and ability diverse than ever. As a teacher, your challenge is to partner with each family through recognizing their individual strengths, concerns, priorities, and resources. Dr. Johnna Darragh Ernst offers practical ideas for creating a welcoming atmosphere for families that will encourage them to participate in their children's learning community. From improving children's school readiness to encouraging positive… More »

Lilian Katz has spent many years conducting workshops for teachers, parents, and students all over the world, and during those workshops she has often referred to her son Stephen, and what she has termed the "intellectual emergencies" she experienced during the years he was growing up. Her responses to these "emergencies," the moments when he analyzed her actions and challenged her decisions as a parent and a teacher, are pulled together in this book. With music and words from… More »

At last! A book has finally arrived that takes the worry out of parent-teacher communication. This innovative and original guide makes it easy for preschool teachers to connect with parents and involve them in the learning process using family meetings. Offering a complete plan for every meeting, Partnering With Parents is bursting with helpful tips, strategies, and creative ways to build a connection between home and school.

The Busy Family's Guide to Volunteering shows you how to access the resources and information available to find volunteer opportunities that meet the needs of your family. Whether you have a two-year-old or an eighteen-year-old, you'll find everything you need to know to have a fulfilling and fun volunteer experience, from finding the right opportunity for your family to answers to hesitations you may have. The perfect book for families who want to do good things for their community, spend quality… More »

Seventy-nine interactive activities based on positive messages help children increase their attention spans, reduce hyperactivity, build self esteem, and facilitate language development. The interactions teach children how to be kind and caring using gentle touches. 208 pages.

Help children maintain skills while away from school with this award-winning series and original summer learning program! Daily activities in reading, writing, mathematics, and language arts with bonus activities in science and geography. Also included are full-color flash cards, incentive contract calendars, a certificate of completion, and the Summer Bridge Kids who guide children though their daily exercises.

"99 Tips for School Readiness" is designed to provide simple, developmentally appropriate activities to help children ages four and five get ready for school. The activities progress in difficulty within each skill area and can be used by families or by teachers. Skill areas include: Self-Help, Social-Behavioral, Gross Motor, Fine Motor, Language, and Cognitive. Book measures 9"L x 6"W x 1/4" thick.

This resource book offers you the benefits of the most current research on child development, featuring helpful tips and techniques to foster your child's growth.

Zen Parenting offers practical insights into using the Zen practice of non-judgmental awareness to deal with the day-to-day chaos and joy of parenting.The short story format allows readers to easily grasp and apply Zen concepts in their own lives. 144 pages.

Good Clean Fun has over 70 of the best games for kids ages 4 to 11. Enjoy playing with your child while stimulating their imagination with memory games, creative play games, conversation games, games about letters, and much more.

"Around the Family Table" contains 365 intriguing questions guaranteed to spark lively discussions between parents and children. Families can establish a valuable, enriching tradition of spirited mealtime conversation that will bring them closer with every question. Paperback. 160 pages.

The Simpler Family shows families how to make their dreams come true by making smart choices about the way they spend their time and money. Its proven, real-life strategies help families increase their free time together, reduce stress on parents and children, improve parents' work/life balance, increase healthfulness and save time and money.

This book emphasizes creating positive relationships with parents and families as the foundation for strong, ongoing partnerships between parents and families and after-school programs. This edition includes revised and expanded learning activities and answer guides to reflect current issues and concerns; revised and expanded handouts; enhanced and expanded tools for assessing parent needs and concerns; new and expanded tip sheets for building connections with parents and families; and a selected… More »

Get the most of the revised edition with this companion CD-ROM containing more than 40 pages of Core Learning Activity handouts plus sample posters for promoting a family-friendly program environment and sample cover letters and response forms.

This book contains hundreds of up-to-date service projects and ideas presented in an engaging, kid-friendly format and it has something for everyone who wants to make a difference. Features and benefits include: over 500 service learning project ideas -- from simple to large scale, the "Ten Steps to Successful Service Projects", a new sections on Internet use and school service learning requirements, step-by-step instructions for creating flyers, petitions, press releases, and more. The… More »

This essential book features practical information on guiding your children through your divorce. Topics include: how to tell the children, keeping your ex from becoming an ex-parent, handling the holidays, learning "divorce-speak", dating and more. Children do not believe in no fault divorce. They blame the parents or themselves. No matter what their age, they need reassurance, security and love to get through this painful period. Drawing on her own and others' experiences as well as… More »

In this controversial look at privileged families, Madeline Levine offers thoughtful, practical advice as she explodes one child-rearing myth after another. With empathy and candor, she identifies parenting practices that are toxic to healthy self-development and that have contributed to epidemic levels of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse in the most unlikely place -- the affluent family. Paperback. 256 pages.

Dr. Levine shows parents and those who care for children how to identify these individual learning patterns, explaining how they can strengthen a child's abilities and either bypass or help overcome the child's weaknesses, producing positive results instead of repeated frustration and failure. Consistent progress can result when we understand that not every child can do equally well in every type of learning and begin to pay more attention to individual learning patterns -- and individual minds… More »

The classic guide of the post-Dr. Spock generation has been revised to include the latest information on virtually every aspect of infant and baby care. "The Baby Book" is unrivaled in its scope and authority, and presents a practical, contemporary approach to parenting that reflects the way we live today. Focusing on the essential needs of babies -- eating, sleeping, development, health, and comfort -- it addresses the questions of greatest concern to parents. The Searses acknowledge… More »

"ScreamFree Parenting" is not just another parenting book. It's the first parenting book that maintains -- from beginning to end -- that parenting is NOT about kids, it's about parents. As parents pay more attention to controlling their own behavior instead of their kids' behavior, the result is stronger, more rewarding, and more fulfilling family relationships. By staying calm and connected with your kids, you begin to operate less out of your deepest fears and more out of your highest… More »

Few behavioral problems challenge and frustrate parents, caregivers, and teachers as does verbal rudeness in children of any age. Reinforced by the wise-cracking kids on TV and in the movies, backtalk has become all too common among today's youngsters. But there is nothing cute about this behavior. Remarks like "Yeah, right," "Big deal," and "Make me" -- from children as young as three -- get in the way of real communication between parents and kids, and can also be… More »

It starts with a whimper, an insistent demand, or a certain tone of voice that every parent recognizes with dread -- your child is starting to whine, and if you don't respond properly you'll have a full-blown tantrum or argument on your hands. Kids of all ages know that whining works when they want that extra hour of TV, the unplanned toy purchase, or a later curfew. But stopping such behavior without giving in to a child's demands isn't easy, and if left unchecked, whining can lead to constant… More »

This fresh, practical, and realistic guide explains to parents how they can avoid mealtime battles with kids aged one to six years, using sensible strategies that will establish a lifetime of healthful eating habits. With cases ranging from the toddler who eats only peanut butter and jelly on white bread to the six-year-old who insists on scrambled eggs and cheese at every meal, pediatrician William G. Wilkoff, M.D., has been counseling picky eaters and their concerned parents for more than twenty… More »

Who's the expert on your child? You are! But, what if you need validation? What if you need support? What if you have questions? As a parent, you may assume others have it all figured out-that there is some kind of magic decoder ring or secret handshake that will give you the key to parenting. But, if each child is unique, how can there be a one-size-fits-all guide to parenting? Although no one can has it all figured out, "Parents Ask, Experts Answer" empowers you by offering caring, informed… More »