Growing Together: Complete Family Connection Series, Parent & Family Resource Library

Growing Together: Family Connection Series, Parent & Family Resource Library

Growing Together: Family Connection Series, Parent & Family Resource Library is a comprehensive collection of 100 early learning focused, family education handouts designed to help programs strengthen the connection between home and school.

The library gives families practical, easy-to-use guidance for supporting children’s learning, communication, social-emotional development, behavior, healthy routines, independence, physical development, safety, relationships, and major early childhood transitions. Each resource is written in clear, supportive language and provides realistic strategies families can use during everyday routines, play, meals, outings, transitions, and time together at home.

The collection is organized into five broad family-support themes, with four focused topic areas within each theme and five handouts within each topic area, creating a structured library of 100 resources that is easy for teachers, directors, and families to navigate.

The five themes include:

· Learning & School Readiness: Supporting communication, early literacy, early math and thinking skills, curiosity, confidence, classroom routines, and independent learning.

· Social-Emotional Development & Behavior: Helping children understand and manage emotions, build friendships, develop positive behavior skills, navigate separation and transitions, and experience greater consistency between home and school.

· Healthy Habits & Everyday Care: Providing practical support with nutrition, sleep, toileting, bathroom independence, hygiene, sensory needs, body awareness, and everyday wellness routines.

· Growing Independence & Physical Skills: Strengthening fine-motor and self-help abilities, everyday independence and responsibilities, gross-motor development, active play, body awareness, movement, and personal safety skills.

· Family Life, Transitions & Growing Up: Supporting sibling relationships, healthy technology habits, the transition to kindergarten, summer learning, changing routines, and experiences that extend beyond the classroom.

Every handout follows the same familiar format: What You Might Notice → Why This Matters → Simple Things to Try at Home → Try This! → Keep in Mind → When to Talk With Your Child’s Teacher

This consistent structure helps families quickly understand the topic, recognize what they may be seeing in their child, learn why the skill or behavior matters, and identify simple steps they can try at home. Each resource also encourages appropriate communication between families and teachers when additional support or shared observations may be helpful.

The Growing Together resources are designed to be supportive rather than clinical. They do not label, diagnose, or create unnecessary pressure around development. Instead, they emphasize that young children grow at different rates, skills develop through repeated experience, and many everyday challenges can be supported through predictable routines, patient practice, positive relationships, and collaboration between home and school.

The library can be used in many ways throughout the year. Programs may share individual handouts after a parent-teacher conversation, include them in newsletters or family education materials, provide them during conferences, use them to reinforce classroom skills at home, or select resources that address common questions families are experiencing at a particular time of year.

Each handout also includes space for the program’s school or program name, phone number, email address, and website, allowing the entire collection to be customized and presented as a cohesive family resource provided by the early learning program.