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6 resources to support families learning together all summer long

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May 31, 2022 |
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Summer break is here. It's time to find fun and engaging activities to encourage students and their families to keep learning throughout summer months! The team at NCFL has rounded up a list of resources to check out:

Cover image of NCFL's Family Engagement Activities booklet

Parent and Child Together (PACT) Time® activities are designed to be playful interactions between adults and children that also support the child’s learning and development. NCFL staff have designed a bundle of activities that encompass social-emotional benefits of play-based learning, foster inclusion, nurture cognitive and social development, support emergent learning in literacy and math and, most importantly, cultivate joy! Download the bundle here.

Unite for Literacy’s platform of nonfiction books for emergent readers features audible narration, language options, and a plethora of topics. In all, there are more than 50 language narrations represented among this free, digital book library!

DREME Family Math offers resources aimed at improving math skills for young scholars. Explore the site to find research-based activities designed to increase joy and learning in family math.

Planning a summer health fair? NCFL’s Healthy Family Habits free event toolkit offers step-by-step guides for hosting four different intergenerational events with quality family engagement opportunities. 

Who Smarted? is an online educational podcast designed to pique children’s curiosity in science and history topics. Visit the website to listen to the podcast episodes or listen on any podcast player. 

At the public broadcasting station WETA's summer reading website, Start with a Book, find 24 themes for families to dive into—music, dinosaurs, bugs, flight, planets and stars, our green world, inventors, detectives, explorers, and much more. Each theme includes dozens of carefully chosen fiction and nonfiction books, hands-on activities, writing ideas, apps and websites to deepen a child's learning. The site also features free toolkits and activity guides, plus tips on reading aloud and building fluency skills.

Looking for more activities? Follow NCFL and #NCFLOutofSchoolTime on your social media platform of choice for more ideas throughout the summer!

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NCFL Partners

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Toyota

Toyota, one of the nation's most successful corporations, began a partnership with NCFL in 1991. In addition to a commitment of more than $50 million, Toyota has also contributed a wealth of in-kind support — including advertising, planning and management expertise — to form one of the most progressive corporate/nonprofit partnerships in the nation.

Three major programs have been developed through the Toyota partnership based on the family literacy model of parents and children learning together. These models have influenced federal and state legislation, leveraged local dollars to support family literacy and led to successful programs being replicated across the country.

Read more about Toyota's commitment to communities

William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust

NCFL received its very first donation in 1989 from the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust to promote and implement family literacy programming, first in Kentucky and North Carolina and later nationwide. The Kenan Family Literacy Model in part laid the groundwork for 30 years of subsequent family literacy and family learning programming developed by NCFL.

Kenan has continued to support NCFL’s place-based family literacy programs since our inception. Most recently, it has invested in our organization’s Sharon Darling Innovation Fund, which will launch emerging ideas and programmatic evolutions in the multigenerational learning space.

Learn more about the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust

Dollar General Literacy Foundation

The Dollar General Literacy Foundation began partnering with NCFL in 2006. A signature effort of this partnership is the National Literacy Directory, a resource that launched in 2010 and strives to guide potential students and volunteers to literacy services, community education programs, and testing centers in their communities.

The National Literacy Directory contains over 10,000 educational agencies located across the United States and has a dedicated toll-free number to help support those wanting to pursue educational opportunities in their communities.

Dollar General also provides support for development of NCFL’s innovative family learning resources centered on financial literacy and Parent and Child Together (PACT) Time®.

Learn more about the Dollar General Literacy Foundation

PNC Grow Up Great

PNC Grow Up Great believes deeply in the power of high-quality early childhood education and provides innovative opportunities that assist families, educators and community organizations to enhance children's learning and development.

PNC Grow Up Great has partnered with NCFL since 1994, most recently in Louisville, Kentucky, to support Say & Play with Words, our pre-Kindergarten vocabulary-building initiative.

NCFL's work is also featured on the PNC Grow Up Great Lesson Center website. The Lesson Center includes over 100 free, high-quality preschool lesson plans and research-based instructional techniques and strategies. All lesson plans contain Home/School Connections printouts, in English and Spanish, to help families extend and reinforce the learning at home.

Learn more about PNC Grow Up Great

U.S. Department of Education

Initiated through the U.S. Department of Education in 2018, the Statewide Family Engagement Centers (SFEC) program provides 12 grantees and 13 states with five-year, $5 million grants to promote and implement systemic evidenced-based family engagement strategies. NCFL was selected to lead SFECs in two states, Arizona and Nebraska, and is a primary partner for two other SFECs in Kentucky and Maryland/Pennsylvania. 

The SFECs work to support family engagement through state- and local-level agencies while providing both professional development to school districts and direct services to families related to children’s academic outcomes and overall well-being.

Learn more about the U.S. Department of Education

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

NCFL was named a recipient of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s "Voices for Economic Opportunity Grand Challenge," which seeks to elevate diverse voices in order to broaden the conversation about the issues inhibiting economic mobility and generate deeper awareness along with actionable understanding. NCFL will develop and launch a podcast series that will highlight the remarkable stories of low-income, diverse families across the U.S. who have improved their communities through Family Service Learning.

Foundation Website