With the COVID-19 Pandemic continuing into the new program year, the FCS agent continued virtual programming to reach families with children pre-school aged and younger. All youth in the county were participating in virtual school, but families with younger children were losing opportunities to build essential skills needed for entering kindergarten. 

The Grayson County Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Agent collaborated with the local Early Childhood Education Coalition to provide family learning kits. These kits were made available to families for pick up outside the Extension Office and targeted families with children ages 16 months – 5 years. Each kit included a children’s book, learning activities and manipulatives to accompany the book, along with educational information from the Extension Office. Data consistently shows that reading to your child is the single most important thing a parent can do to prepare them for school. We were happy to provide new reading materials to families during such a time where they may not have been able to access new books. 

Information shared in the kits included the University Healthy at Home Newsletters, an Extension Kids Korner Newsletter or a Dinner Conversations Newsletter used from thedinnertableproject.org; all of which reinforce educational concepts supported by Family and Consumer Sciences. For the children, various activities were shared and specifically designed to build early learning skill sets such as gross motor and fine motor skills, critical thinking, handwriting skills, math and counting, letter identification, and social emotional skills. 

Over the course of 8 months, 84 families were reached through the Laugh and Learn virtual programs. Nineteen of those families returned an evaluation of the program. As a direct result of these programming efforts, 84.2% of families reported that their child(ren) have put new social-emotional skills into practice as well as improved gross motor skills. 68.4% of families reported their child(ren) improved literacy skills and 79% improved fine motor skills. Other progress or improvements families noted as a direct result of participating in this program included: 

“I’ve seen improvements in motor planning skills, having to listen and follow instructions, growth in gross motor skills whin applying it to the crafts. Also, an increase in vocabulary and literacy skills. Whenever we get the packets it is certainly an opportunity for enrichment in many areas” 

“More focus on activities, better control with fine motor skills, more knowledge on certain subjects, bigger imagination.”

“Socializing more, being more vocal about needs. She has worked on her fine motor skills and is better at drawing simple things and following short directions.”  

In person programming will resume when we are able, however, the kits were such a success, I believe it will remain a part of the overall program in order to reach families that may not be able to attend and participate in the face to face sessions.