🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

• ♻️ Environmental Thinking — Using natural or recycled materials in crafts begins to develop awareness that materials have a life beyond their original use — an early foundation for environmental stewardship and sustainable thinking.
• 👁️ Hand-Eye Coordination — Guiding scissors along a line, placing stickers exactly, and painting within a space all require the visual-motor integration that handwriting, sports, and detailed work depend on.
• 📋 Planning & Sequencing — Multi-step craft projects require children to think about what comes first, next, and last — building the procedural sequencing skills that underlie reading comprehension, mathematics, and everyday problem solving.
• 💪 Persistence & Resilience — Working through a craft that doesn't go as planned, fixing mistakes, and persisting to completion teaches children that effort — not talent — produces results, a mindset that predicts lifelong learning.

The premise of National Family Week is children lead better lives when families are strong and families are strong when they receive support from the communities they live. It's essential for communities to supply families with connections to services, economic opportunities, and social networks. That's why the theme of National Family Week is Connections Count.Take the time this week to find out what is being done in your community to support families and make them stronger. Find out what more can be done and how you and your family, including your preschooler, can help.

Ways for you and your Family to Make Connections Count

Here are some ways that you, your family, and your preschooler can help make the family-community connection during National Family Week, and perhaps in the future as well. Remember that while your preschooler will not understand any of this on the deeper level, children learn more by the example we set than by anything else.

Participate in National Family Week Celebrations in your Community

Call your city government, your local organizations that serve children, or your child’s school to find out if your city has events planned for National Family Week. If not, create your own event with your family and invite others to attend.

Make a Point of Spending More Quality Time with your Family

This week, set aside some time every day or evening to spend special time with your family. One of the things you might do together is make the Preschool Tissue Tube Friendship Sticks to give to people you would like make a connection with during National Family Week. This could include neighbors, teachers, city officials, friends, anyone your family would like to reach out to.

Do something as a family to improve your community such as making the Preschool Basic Greeting Card for guests at a local care facility for shut-ins. Many elderly people no longer have any family or friends they can count on, so instead of just dropping off the cards, take time to visit with the guests. Establish a relationship and continue to visit on a regular basis that the guests can count on.

Get to Know your Neighbors

Here’s a good way to get rid of those Thanksgiving leftovers. Invite your neighbors to a Thanksgiving Leftover Potluck. Provide games or crafts for after dinner. If your plan to organize a craft time, don’t forget to read 15 Tips to Make Preschool Craft Time Fun

Organize a neighborhood meeting to discuss the issues affecting families in your community. Choose a person to take down the information and write a letter to your community leaders or city government. Have everyone who participated sign it and send it to your city government.

Discuss what you can do, as neighbors, to make your neighborhood a better place to live. You might organize neighborhood clean ups, book drives for schools or libraries, volunteer with organizations that help the community, or take turns being the family to host a weekly get-together for neighborhood teens.

Send Thank You Notes to People in the Community that Help Families

This can be teachers, Scout leaders, city council members that have worked to make things better for families in your community, etc. Let your preschooler write a thank you letter to anyone, such as a preschool teacher, doctor, friend, neighbor, who has helped him/her using the Basic Preschool Note

Communicate with Schools, City and State Governments, and Local Organizations.

Even if you have no neighborhood or other support, contact those who make decisions affecting support for families in your area. Let them know what you think they are doing well, but also what you think still needs to be done.

Featured National Family Week Crafts

The Basic Preschool Note will help your preschooler express thanks and appreciation to people in his/her life. By writing down his/her words you help your preschooler express him/herself in writing. This same note can also be used to offer friendship to someone your preschooler wants to know better.

The Preschool Toilet Paper Roll Friendship Stick is simple to make. The symbolic colors on the upper part of the stick represent the elements that give everyone life while the colors on the bottom half represent the rainbow that brings us all together. Make many sticks and pass them out to friends old and new.

The Preschool Basic Greeting Card is a great way to let your preschooler give part of him/herself to others. They can be used for any occasion for relatives and friends, but they are also wonderful to take when visiting shut-ins.