Resources
Explore research-based resources designed to help you support your child’s growth and development. Discover easy‑to‑use tools to track your child’s progress and see how they’re growing across key learning areas.
Explore & Support Development
Making Books Come Alive
In this video you will learn how to make books come alive for your child. You will go over some tips on how to make reading fun and how to help your child learn more while reading! This will help your child develop a love for reading and get him ready for kindergarten.
Playing with Letters and Sounds
Have fun learning letters with your child by naming and finding letters in his or her name and paying attention to words in the environment.
Writing Together
Learn how to draw and write with your child during everyday activities.
Talking Is Teaching
In this video you will learn about the importance of talking to your child and how to keep the conversation going. We discuss strategies you can use that will make having extended conversations with your child easy and enjoyable.
Building World Knowledge
This video highlights the importance of building content knowledge around STEM concepts (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). We discuss different strategies to use with your child and provide examples of activities to do with your child to build content knowledge.
Building Trust and Cooperation
In this video, we discuss strategies you can use to build trust and cooperation with your child. We highlight the importance of understanding your child’s signals and responding to them warmly and sensitively.
Talking Is Teaching
Learn how to enhance your child’s language by tuning in and talking, and by keeping the conversation going between you and your child.
ABC Letter-Sound Song
Help your child learn letter names, sounds, and objects that start with each letter with this musical video!
Building Your Child’s Vocabulary
Learn how to build your child’s word knowledge by using big and sophisticated words in everyday conversations and by defining words in ways your child can understand.
Making Books Come Alive
Make books come alive by asking questions and expanding on your child’s ideas!
Math Rules!
Help your child develop his or her math skills by counting, grouping, and comparing objects and items during everyday routines and activities.
Dream It, Build It!
Help your child become a young engineer by tinkering with objects and coming up with creative solutions to problems at home and in their world.
Build Trust and Cooperation
This handout will help parents learn how to build their child’s self-confidence by accepting and naming their emotions and using positive praise.
What’s the Big Idea?
Unlock your child’s curiosity about the world by asking questions and teaching big words.
Let’s Figure It Out
Expose your child to science everywhere you go by planning simple investigations and making predictions about what will happen.
Show What You Know
Help your child build tools for doing science by thinking about how and why things work and gathering information as you explore.
Picture This!
Encourage your child to act like a scientist or engineer by explaining parts of objects and how systems work using close observations or models.
Encouraging Your Child to Cooperate
Sometimes children do not want to help clean up or transition from playing to completing a daily routine, such as brushing their teeth. This PALS Spotlight shares different strategies parents can use when children are reluctant to cooperate.
Help Your Child Learn to Behave
It is natural for young children to feel overwhelmed, frustrated, and angry and to display these feelings by having a tantrum. In this PALS Spotlight, parents learn several preventive strategies to effectively and positively manage children’s challenging behaviors.
Reading with Your Child
Reading books with children builds their language and early literacy skills. This PALS Spotlight highlights different strategies parents can use before, during, and after reading a book with their child that is engaging and supports learning.
Responding to Your Child When It’s Difficult to Do So
This PALS Spotlight will provide strategies on how to be responsive to young children when it may be difficult to do so, such as when parents are tired, stressed, or busy.
Responding to Your Child’s Negative Signals
In this PALS Spotlight, parents will learn how to identify and interpret children’s negative signals and respond to them in a warm, sensitive, and contingent way that help children feel acknowledged and understood.
Responding to Your Child’s Positive Signals
In this PALS Spotlight, parents will learn how to identify and interpret children’s positive signals and respond to them in a warm, sensitive, and contingent way that encourages children’s communication.
Sharing Books with Your Child
Sharing books with young children can sometimes be challenging. This PALS Spotlight provides examples of different ways young children like to explore books and how parents can share control during book time so children build a positive association with books.
Talking to Your Child
Young children want to connect and communicate with their parents. In this PALS Spotlight, different language strategies will be described that help young children learn how to better understand and use words.
Your early learning guide: 36 to 48 months
Use this guide to better understand your prekindergarten-age child’s behaviors and skills, along with tips that help you respond in warm, supportive ways that nurture their overall development.
Explore Early Learning
Families can use this information to better understand their child’s development across key learning areas and how each area supports future learning. Each learning area includes related activities for you and your child to do at home.
Make It a Game!
Here are some easy and fun ways to make an activity, such as cleanup or a transition, into a game! Making a game out of an activity can often help promote cooperation and turn a “no” into a “yes!”
Empowering Self-Care for Families with Young Children
Parenting can be incredibly rewarding, but it comes with its fair share of challenges and stressors. This webinar (1 hour, 10 minutes) provides some strategies and practices for promoting self-care.
Resources for Children with Learning and Developmental Differences
The Children’s Learning Institute provides this free collection of high-quality online resources related to common developmental concerns, such as autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Respectful Toilet Learning
Get practical tips in this 40‑minute webinar on recognizing potty‑training readiness, making a game plan that works for your family, and helping your child build independence with confidence.
Reading Tips for Parents of Preschoolers
The early years are key to building a lifelong love of reading! Reading Rockets shares fun ideas to help your prekindergarten-age child grow into a happy, confident reader. Tips are available in multiple languages.
Selecting a Child Care Program
While on a virtual or in-person tour, use these checklists from Child Care Aware® of America to help you find safe and high-quality child care.
Track & Understand Progress
Understanding Your Child’s Assessment Results
This guide provides a comprehensive overview of the CLI Engage Student Report for Parents that will help families interpret their children’s results.
Family-Friendly Descriptions of Assessment Measures
These resources describe CLI Engage assessment measures and why they are important for later school success.
Tips for Parents: Parent-Teacher Conferences
Learn more from ¡Colorín colorado! about parent-teacher conferences and how you can use the meeting to ask questions that will help your child.
