Review

Communication with Parents and Families: The Creative Curriculum® for Family Child Care, 3^rd Edition promotes family involvement. Many of the curriculum's materials provide support and guidance for communicating with parents (e.g., Volume 1, Chapter 4: Building Partnerships with Families). Volume 2: Routines and Experiences includes family partnership letters for providers to connect families to children's learning in care. The curriculum provides guidance on encouraging families to speak their home language with their children and bring it into the provider's home. It also offers suggestions for communicating with families in their preferred language when possible.

Engaging Parents and Families: Volume 1: The Foundation provides support and guidance for engaging with and building partnerships with families. It also includes a list of questions for providers to choose from to get to know families. The curriculum offers guidance on challenging situations (e.g., Family Conference forms, Family/child information forms). Volume 2: Routines and Experiences includes family partnership letters. The curriculum provides guidance on understanding the influence of culture in the lives of young children and on learning about the cultures of the families. It also gives guidance on working with stressed families. Additionally, it provides guidance on appreciating differences and understanding the influence of culture when getting to know families in Volume 1. It suggests culturally responsive ways of interacting with diverse children and families. However, the curriculum does not provide specific guidance on working with tribal families. 
 

Communication with Parents and Families: Parent Involvement, Family Engagement & Gee Whiz provides information on communicating with parents. The guide highlights written communication tools included in the curriculum (e.g., Family Letters; Digital Family Notes; All About My Week Reports; and Just a Note). The curriculum offers suggestions and guidance for goal-setting with families and a goal planning worksheet. Materials are available in English, and some in Spanish, that give a range of information on parent involvement and strategies. Gee Whiz Education Curriculum 2019–2020 User's Guide provides tips related to communicating with families in culturally and linguistically responsive ways. For example, it suggests that providers use Google Translate to learn some basic words in the family's home language. It also suggests that providers invite family members to come in to teach the children how to sing common songs in their home language.

Engaging Parents and Families: Gee Whiz Education Curriculum 2019–2020 User's Guide offers "Examples of Questions You May Want to Ask Families." The curriculum provides a reference to an online resource for working with children with differing abilities. It lacks guidance for working with families who are English language learners and engaging them with the program.