Making Family Engagement Fun ⛄️

PRO Board
Jan 27
2 min read

Updated: Jan 31

Why Family Engagement Matters in Child Care Programs

Enhances Child Outcomes: Children thrive when their families are involved in their learning and care. Engagement leads to better social, emotional, and academic development.
Strengthens Program Quality: Programs that actively engage families tend to be more responsive, inclusive, and effective in meeting children's needs.

Want an activity that engages everyone's interest, brings families and their children together and promotes creativity. I promise it is the most fun your program will ever have.

Try hosting a Snowman Event.

Each child in your program receives a flyer explaining the directions for creating a Snowman at home with their familiy. There are 3 simple directions

1. Your snowman can be built out of any materials you choose. Some ideas are paper, Styrofoam, cloth, wood, clay, paper mache, cotton balls, or any other materials you can think of.

2. The maximum size should be no more that 15'tall and 12' wide.

3. The Snowman you make must be homemade by children and their parents or other family member.

This last one is very important and the point of the project. It is a parent-child activity!

Give your families 2-3 weeks to work on their creation. A great way to show off all the creations is to hold a POTLUCK at the end. Display all of the snowman created.

I sponsored this activity for over 10 years in my program and was always amazed at how creative the children and their families were. While we called it a contest, everyone was a winner. Each creation received an award for being the most...something. Check out some of these entries!

Since Portland is usually lacking in snow during the winter we really played up the snow theme during January. THE KIDS LOVED IT. Who doesn't love snow? Our program was decorated with all things snowmen.

Each child was presented with an award for their creation We made a big deal out of each one. We made snowman medals to go around their necks and gave each child a bag of "Snowman Soup" with a poem attached.

Sometimes we would even fill snowman bags (from Oriental Trading Company) with snowmen pencils, stickers, pads of paper-whatever we could find.

It was great fun for all.

I think it was best summed up by one child , who at the end of showing all the creations and acknowledging each child and what they did he shouted

"THIS WAS THE BEST FUN EVER. I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL WE DO IT AGAIN NEXT YEAR" Can't beat a comment like that.

In case you are wondering what snowman soup is-

1 packet of hot chocolate

1 chocolate kiss

a handful of small marshmallows

one small candy cane to stir the mix