Parent Involvement in an Integrated Curriculum

Childcare centres welcome parental and community involvement in children’s education.

Centres provide opportunities for parents and the community to share their knowledge, skills and resources as support in children’s growth, learning and development.

Parent participation can be seen in centres especially during festive celebrations, field trips, fundraising activities, after school clubs and parent-teacher conferences.

Community involvement in centres can be observed during talks of resource speakers, field trips and fundraising activities.

Joyce Epstein created a framework for a productive school, family and community cooperation.

1. Parenting
Provide information to families about parenting, child's growth, development and learning.

2. Communicating
Do practices that allow effective home-to-school and school-to-home communication.

3. Volunteering
The school allows the family members to volunteer.

4. Learning at home
Give suggestions on different ways that families can help children in their learning activities at home.

5. Decision making
Family members needed to be a part of the school governance that affect the school policy.

6. Collaborating with the community
Align families with community resources. Involve the community in school programs which allow meaningful connections between the school and the community (Feeney, Moravcik, Nolte, Christensen, 2010).

Parents can provide resources once they are informed what is needed. Teachers need to be clear and precise of the materials they will ask from parents from them to understand what is being asked for. Parents might also know of special animals or people that the children would like to know more of. Parents can also suggest an interesting place to visit (Hendrick, 2003).

References:

Feeney, S., Moravcik, E., Nolte, S., Christensen, D. (2010). Who am I in the lives of children? An introduction to early childhood education. New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.

Hendrick, J. (2003). Total learning: Developmental curriculum for the young child (6th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.

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