Parent volunteering guide in the early childhood center
Limit the group to no more than six students because you should respond to every student’s request in terms of some help to be provided or some questions asked. Sit at table with students so that you could see what they do and control the process and provide them with a feedback immediately after noticing some errors or difficulties experienced by student.
You will have to prepare a few patterns with pictures that should be coloured with the help of pencils. The complexity of pictures should depend on the age of children. Thus, smaller children should be assigned an easier picture to colour while older children can cope with more complicated pictures.
Though the task is really simple, you can ask children to use only warm colours (this means that you should tell children what colours are considered warm and what are cold). Moreover, you should limit the number of colours so that children could definitely choose the warm or the cold ones. The essence of this practice is to make children aware of the colour palette and some of its peculiarities in the process of drawing and make sure all children learn to perform the task accurately and neatly.
Benefits of volunteering to parents
I believe that parents gain more than satisfaction because coming to the classroom enables them to see how their children progress and learn about some difficulties that a child may face. If a child have some problems with in-class performance and tells nothing about those difficulties to his/her parents at home, parents may be unaware of those problems. In this respect, coming to the classroom is a great opportunity to see what is going on in the class, see how other children demonstrate their skills and analyse a child’s progress. A parent can help even if a child does not have any problems because children treat their parents’ visits as really encouraging ones and a child wants to work to full capacity so that his/her parents saw with their own eyes how successful he/she is.
Children can receive some help when their parents come to the classroom because they will be provided with some explanations made by the teacher and extra explanations provided by parents. I am sure that a child who knows that his/her parents can assist in any activity will over perform. Thus, children can become more confident and active regarding the in-class activities and tasks that have been challenging before.
Engaging parents into volunteering
I really like the idea that notes can be sent to parents in the children’s Friday folders asking for volunteers. Besides, you can inform parents about the necessity of volunteering in advance. This may be performed during parents-teachers conferences. You can prepare some plan of activities that require parents’ participation, for example, every month and inform parents about the necessity of volunteering at the beginning of every month so that they could shift their schedule and get ready to assist in the classroom.
Moreover, informing parents in advance can help you gain more active participation of parents in family volunteering in the classroom. If you have more than one occasion that requires family volunteering in the classroom, you can ask parents to divide themselves in groups of equal number of members or in groups that would have a number of members corresponding to the activity. For instance, some activities can involve more family volunteers in the class. In this respect, some parents that are busy at the end of the month can participate in those family volunteering activities that are held at the beginning of the month.
Benefits of parent volunteering to early education centers
I believe that volunteering as tutors is a great activity to have parents and other family members involved in what takes place in the classroom. This volunteering enables parents to introduce their own approach to classroom activities and their vision of the teaching-learning process.
Besides, parents as volunteers can participate in activities that are limited to a smaller number of students than there are in class. So, all students can be involved into an activity simultaneously and a teacher can introduce more activities at a time than while engaging no volunteers. A parent can assist his/her child and other children by means of giving examples, guiding, and providing them with a feedback at each step they take.
Field trips and holiday parties can be considered an integral part of the early childhood education program including various simulations of daily life situations and step necessary to succeed I those situations. In other words, children should be accompanied by volunteering parents during field trips because even if you explain the rules to follow to children, you may fail to look after every child. It is natural that the whole group of children is engaged into the field trip and more than one adult should be engaged into watching after children so that they were in safety.