The Carolina Family Engagement Center (CFEC) in partnership with the South Carolina State Library have developed a series of three family engagement kits (e.g., self, family, community), each of which is designed to help give parents and caregivers ideas on how they can use fun activities at home to support their children's social, emotional, and academic development (SEAD).
The idea to develop family engagement kits came about from a meeting CFEC staff had with Caroline Smith, SC State Library Inclusive Services Consultant, and an active CFEC community partner. The SC State Library already had an initiative to provide circulating kits but was seeking ideas for new kits that may be of interest to children and their families. The circulating kits contain everything someone might need to host a library program. They are intended for hands-on interaction for all ages, but some kits are age specific, some examples are Kitchen-in-a-Box, DIY Escape Rooms, and Billingual Storytimes.
To increase community outreach about the importance of family engagement in education, CFEC saw an opportunity to build on the success of an existing library initiative. Over the course of the last year, CFEC project manager Theresa Harrison & CFEC liaisons Julia Beaty and Lorilei Swanson gathered information and resources from various areas SEL, family literacy, health to develop the kits. They sought continuous feedback from Ms. Smith on additional activities to include, for books that could be purchased and made available in the library, as well as on the creation of a common family engagement kit template.
The kits are now in circulation and have been translated into Spanish. All versions of the kits will be made available virtually and easily accessible via a QR code placed on CFEC and SC State Library bookmarks that will be given out to patrons of the library. Additionally, public and school libraries will be able to check out the kits for use in the classroom or for community events!