The Family Center

This is a place where parents, children, and other family members can find resources for Parent and Children Together (PACT) activities, and links to information which will help parents.

 

picture of a schoolbus
From the LAC Parent and
Family Resources Web page

Ants on A Banana Bus
http://www.hamstertours.com/snacks.html
Parents, children, teachers and others can make a great dessert while reading beautifully and amusingly illustrated directions written at a very basic literacy level.  This may be the Web's most popular online family literacy activity.

Brainpop
http://www.brainpop.com
This is a highly interactive science, health and technology Website designed for children, and also used by adult learners.   One needs high speed access to the Internet (e.g. a DSL, ISDN or TI connection) or to patiently download and save the animated movies and load them from a hard drive or external storage disk; direct access by modem is frustratingly slow. There are a number of different topics, each with a clever, entertaining animated movie which a parent or child can, at any point, stop and discuss.  For example, the water cycle might be good for familes with children five years old or above.

Children's Author Fact Finding Safari
http://www.lacnyc.org/technology/safari.htm
This is an opportunity for elementary and middle school aged children and their parents to test their knowledge of beloved children's authors: Eric Carle, Judy Blume, Beatrix Potter, Ezra jack keats, and Dr. Seuss.

Daisymaths
http://www.daisymaths.com.au
This is a Web page for helping young children enjoy and learn mathematics. Accorsding to its creator, "DaisyMaths is particularly suitable for: preschool children, lower to middle primary school students and parents wishing to help their children with mathematics."

ERIC Reading, English, and Communication Family Information Center
http://reading.indiana.edu/
Resources from the ERIC clearinghouse.

Family Education.com
http://www.familyeducation.com/home/

Family Literacy Resource Notebook
http://literacy.kent.edu/Oasis/famlitnotebook/toc.html
This is the table of contents page of a very well-researched, complete and easy-to-read 1998 book on family literacy by Connie Sapin, Assistant Director of the Ohio Literacy Resource Center and Nancy D. Padak, Ed.D., Professor of Education at Kent State University.  The book has an extensive collection of PACT advice and activities.  The entire book is on-line in PDF and can be downloaded free using Acrobat Reader software (also dowload-able free.)

Family Literacy Special Collections:
Resources For Family Literacy Professionals
http://literacy.kent.edu/Midwest/FamilyLit/profresc.html
This is a Midwest LINCS collection of family literacy resources for practitioners.

Figure This! Math Challenges for Families
http://www.figurethis.org/

Intergenerational Cultural Traditions
http://www.otan.dni.us/webfarm/emailproject/cul.htm
Here is an activity or project developed by California ESL teachers, Susan Gaer and Melissa Wilhoit, where grandparents, parents and children write about and draw or paint their experience of the same family tradition from different generational perspectives.

Intergenerational Learning
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Swearer_Center/Literacy_Resources/intergen.html

Intergenerational Literacy Activities
http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeadult/iglindex.htm

The Colorado Department of Education's Intergenerational Literacy Notebook "is a collection of thematically based activities for adults and their children to complete together. A majority of these activities are designed for English language learners and are life skills based. Science and social studies activities primarily target the ABE / GED learner."

COMPLETE NOTEBOOK -- This is the complete 2004 Intergenerational Literacy Activities document, 282 pages long.

Massachusetts Family Literacy Consortium
http://www.doe.mass.edu/familylit/

Midwest LINCS Family Literacy Special Collection
http://literacy.kent.edu/Midwest/FamilyLit/siteindex.html
If you want to go to one comprehensive Web site on family literacy, here it is: the Midwest Regional LINCS (Literacy Information aNd Communications) family literacy special collection.  Several of the Web pages listed here are from that site. Be sure to check the What's New section, as it is frequently upd with new materials and links to other good Web sites.

Parent and Family Resources on the Web
http://www.lacnyc.org/resources/familylit/
This site includes a list of Web links used as part of a workshop on family literacy offered by the Literacy Assistance Center in New York City.

Parent Made Developmental Toys:
Integrating Parenting, Self-Esteem, Literacy & Fun
http://literacy.kent.edu/Oasis/PACT/
This is a National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) LINCS Hot Site for September, 1999.  The description on the NIFL LINCS national Web site says "Created by Ohio practitioner, Rita Hoppert, this site is being put online in stages. The EvenStart curriculum focuses on hands-on, sensorimotor learning materials for both parent and child. Parents make developmental toys during the ABLE sessions and also manipulate materials when they focus on their own learning needs. As a part of the integrated curriculum, each strength of the system is numbered."

This simple, low-cost, set of activities for pre-schoolers and their families is sound from reading, writing, and visual arts-readiness perspectives. The activities are easy and fun for children and parents.


Parenting Education Bibliography
http://www.ed.psu.edu/goodlinginstitute/pdf/research_topic_b_10_2005.pdf
This is a section of a larger annotated bibliography in family literacy. This section includes literature that has strategies for helping parents to support and foster their children’s literacy and language development needs.

Parents and Children Together Online
http://www.indiana.edu/~reading/www/famres/pctogeth/
This is a magazine for parents and children on the Worldwide Web.  Each issue has lots of stories, at different levels, which parents and children can read together in English and also in Spanish.  It has articles for parents and also reviews of childrens' books.

Drawings of childrens toys.
From the Parent-made Developmental Toys Bingo Web page

 

Summer Home Learning Recipes
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/Recipes
Reading, writing, math and science home learning activities for parents and kids from the Home and School Institute

Talk To Your Baby
http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/talktoyourbaby/quicktips.html
Tips on reading, talking to, wathcing television with, singing and sharing rhymes with, and playign with your baby. In English and several other languages. Developed in Wales, U.K.

 

four drawings of the sun in different colors
From the U.S. Department of Education
Summer Home LearningRecipes Web page

Websites...Which ones should you trust?
http://www.altn.org/webquests/websites/index.html

This is a WebQuest, an organized investigation, using the WorldWide Web, to answer some specific questions, in this case about the quality of information of Web sites. The four questions this WebQuest asks are:

1. Who is the author?
2. Is the information accurate?
3. Is there bias?
4. When was the website made?

This webQuest can be a family activity to help children and other family members learn how to judge the quality of information on a web site.

Word Turtle
http://www.funbrain.com/detect/
Make original word search games for children


Last Updated August 4, 2007 by David J. Rosen