As early childhood educators and care providers, we know that children are learning in everything they do. Part of your role is helping parents to understand that as well. Here are some ideas about how to forge a really strong connection between home and school, increasing learning in both.

Strong parent communication

Strong parent communication is the foundation to a strong home-school connection. Your teachers and your parents cannot support each other if you don’t know what’s happening in each of your worlds.

• Make use of the Wonderschool app to share daily updates about each child in your program. You can use this daily communication tool to feed questions for your parents to ask at home. Or to share songs and rhymes their children are enjoying and may want to continue singing at home with their parents.
• Host parent conferences once or twice a year. The daily drop-off and pick-up times are not the best for deep and meaningful conversations about the children in your program. It’s hectic. Hosting parent conferences allows you one-on-one time with each family to have a focused conversation.

Share what you know about play

That young children learn through play is often still an abstract idea for adults. They can agree and still wonder about worksheets and memorizing the alphabet. The more you can reinforce the message of the play and learning that is happening in your program, the better parents will understand it. Want to give parents ideas about playful learning they can do at home? Share one or more of our Learn-at-Home Guides:

• Guide 1: Learn-at-Home Ideas
• Guide 2: Sensory Play
• Guide 3: Process-Based Art
• Guide 4: Movement
• Guide 5: Pre-Writing Skills

Invite the outside in

Whether you host a parent to talk about their career, or invite a child to share photos from a recent trip to the zoo, making time to bring the outside world into your program will expand the scope of learning for everyone.

• COVID-19 has proven how much more adept at technology we can be. Invite a parent, friend, or neighbor for a Zoom call to share about something of interest to your class
• Designate a specific bulletin board in your class to be about a child in your class. Invite a child to bring in photos of things that are important to them to share with their classmates. Leave the display up for a week or a month and then rotate to a new child.

Join Wonderschool today and gain access to all of our tools and resources that support learning in your program.