Teachers who work with English as a Second Language learners will find ESL/ESOL/ELL/EFL reading/writing skill-building children's books, stories, activities, ideas, strategies to help PreK-3, 4-8, and 9-12 students learn to read.
Parent Guides
Reading at Home with Your Child
Delta Publishing sells videos, DVDs, and handouts available in English and Spanish for educators to teach parents how to read with their children.
About.com: Make at Home Math Games
Links to many math games that use common items such as dice and playing cards. Game boards can be printed too.
About.com: Print and Learn Activities
Links to many printable activities and worksheets. Topics include coloring books, paper dolls, math and reading activities and games.
American Federation of Teachers: Parent Resources
The AFT offers many useful resources for educators to use with parents to help them navigate today’s hot-button educational issues, as well as how to help them become better consumers of public education and advocates for their children.
Audible Kids provides digital audio content for children. Shop, purchase, and download digital audio editions of books, newspapers, and magazines; original programming; and TV and radio subscriptions. Spanish titles are also available.
Campaña Quetzal is a coalition of parent, youth, individuals, educators, and organizations committed to unleashing the academic and personal potential of each Latino student and eliminating the academic achievement gap.
Children First: Developmental Assets
This site outlines the 40 Assets mentioned in the article and offers translations in 9 languages, including Vietnamese and Farsi.
Colorado Parent Information and Resource Center (CPIRC)
The Colorado Parent Information and Resource Center (CPIRC) at Clayton Early Learning provides information about the No Child Left Behind Law and support for school and family partnerships in Colorado that lead to increased student achievement. CPIRC also offers trainings for schools, parents, and districts, and some of these training resources such as PowerPoint presentations are available for free online.
Celebrate the joy of reading with Cuentos y Más, a dynamic show offered by the Arlington Public Library in Arlington, VA and winner of the Outstanding Children's Program award by the Virginia Public Library Directors Association. The program features the talented and engaging bilingual storyteller Mariela Aguilar, who tells stories in English and Spanish and then visits places in the community such as the library. Produced for television, the program is now available as an online video for free viewing.
Cultivating Readers: A Magazine for Parents
The National Center for Family Literacy puts the family at the forefront of educational reform in the area of national literacy. They have produced a free downloadable bilingual magazine in English and Spanish for parents called "Cultivating Readers," which gives tips on promoting reading to children from birth until age 8.
Emergency and Community Health Outreach
Multilingual resources on health and safety resources, languages include English, Hmong, Somali, Spanish, Vietnamese and Cambodian.
Family Education: Printables Center
Valuable printables resource center with thousands of printable activities. Database can be searched by grade level and topic.
Get Ready to Read!'s program vision is that all preschool children will have the skills they need to learn to read when they enter school. This site is part of NCLD's initiative to provide parents, educators, health-care professionals, and advocates with tools to help build early literacy skills, including a bilingual early literacy screening tool.
This website offers a lot of different ways to experience a story: read-a-story, hear-a-story, fill-in-a-story, and finish-a-story are just some of the examples!
How to Make the Most of Summer: What Parents Can Do to Keep Kids Sharp Over the Summer
This parent tip sheet from the National Center for Summer Learning offers parents ideas on ways that they can encourage summer learning. The tip sheet is also available in Spanish.
KidsHealth: Parent Resources (English)
The English-language Parent section of KidsHealth answers questions that parents have about growth and development, expanding on topics such as medical care, sleep, and sexual development.
This article from KidsHealth provides an overview of causes, signs, and symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and how children can be affected and treated by PTSD.
Learning Two Languages: Questions Parents Ask
This article from PBS answers many questions parents have about helping their children become bilingual.
This site offers a monthly column for parents and educators offering information and articles on different subjects. Topics include: reading, parenting, early childhood, and safe schools. One section offers articles in Spanish.
Maryland State Parental Information Resource Center
The Maryland State Parental Information Resource Center's (PIRC) mission is to help parents, community members, and educators in Maryland work together to increase family involvement and improve student achievement. The website offers extensive information in Spanish, as well as information for newly arrived immigrants.
Matrix Parent Network and Resource Center
Matrix is a parent-run information and resource center, helping families of children with special needs in Marin, Solano, Napa, and Sonoma counties of California.
MVParents.com is a parenting Web site built on a foundation of Search Institute's Developmental Assets®. The assets are 40 building blocks for growing up successfully. The site offers parenting resources, a blog, and parent tips.
These brochures for parents cover a variety of topics concerning the education of young children, from providing the best care to finding the right toys. Some are also available in Spanish. The brochures are available for purchase for a minimal fee from the online store of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).
The National Education Association has created Help for Parents to provide information and resources to help parents understand what's happening in their child's classroom.
New York Public Library: Audiobooks Collection
This website allows New York Public Library users to browse the system's free online collection of audiobooks, e-books, video, and more. While users must have a NYPL card to access the database, it offers a helpful example of the kinds of resources that more libraries are using. Audiobooks are also available in Spanish.
Parent Educational Advocacy Training Center
The Parent Educational Advocacy Training Center assists the families of children with disabilities through education, information and training. PEATC builds parent-professional partnerships to promote success in school and community life.
Parent Institute for Quality Education
This website outlines the work PIQE has been doing to promote parent involvement by providing nine-week training courses that will assist parents in understanding the U.S. educational system and becoming better advocates for their children.
The Parent-Child Home Program (formerly the Mother-Child Home Program) is a proven, innovative home-based literacy and parenting program serving families challenged by poverty, low-levels of education, language barriers and other obstacles to educational success.
Parents' Choice: Chicano and Chicana Books for Everyone
Parents' Choice reviews a sample of six Chicano books for children, discussing the ways that the books both resonate with Chicanos and enlighten and inspire readers of other backgrounds as well.
Here you'll find information about your child's development, fun educational activities, information about PBS KIDS programs, and much more!
This site guides parents through their child's development from birth through age 5. This site is also available in Spanish.
PEAK Parent Center provides training, information, and technical assistance to equip parents with strategies to advocate successfully for their children with disabilities. Some information is available in Spanish.
Offers resources for Pre-K advocates, policymakers, business and community leaders, educators, and family.
Raising A Reader's mission is to foster healthy brain development, parent-child bonding, and early literacy skills by engaging parents in a routine of daily "book cuddling" with their children from birth to age five. It offers its program through organizations such as Head Start, and has documented participating children's superior book knowledge and story comprehension.
Reading Rockets Themed Booklists
Reading Rockets highlights a wide variety of themed booklists for kids from 0-9 years old, compiled by children's literature expert Maria Salvadore. Topics range from seasons and holidays to different feelings, activities, games, and animals.
Reading Rockets: Information on Preschool and Child Care
Information about effective preschool programs, what parents should look for in a preschool or child care setting, and early child education.
San Diego School District: Parent Resources
The San Diego Unified School District's parent resource page offers general school policy information in multiple languages, along with helpful articles about testing, attendance, and student performance.
This homework tool allows parents and students to create their own flashcards for subjects such as math and vocabulary.
Sesame English: DVD for Children
Sesame English produces an ESL DVD series for children in grades pre-K to 4 in five languages: Spanish, Hmong, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, and Vietnamese. The DVDs can be purchased online and shipped to the US and Canada.
Sesame Street Beginnings: Talk, Read, Write!
Familiar Sesame Street characters help young children learn the basics of literacy to prepare them for success as they enter school. The site is available in English or Spanish.
Sesame Street: Military Families
Sesame Workshop presents a bilingual educational outreach initiative designed for military families and their young children to share. The materials include a parents' magazine, a children's poster, a facilitator guide, and downloadable videos and music.
Talking About Wordless Picture Books
Talking About Wordless Picture Books: A Tutor Strategy Supporting English Language Learners is designed to support tutors who are working with low-intermediate English language learner (ELL) parents in family literacy programs. Developed by NCFL with funding from UPS, the strategy provides detailed instructional activities to help ELL parents build and practice English conversational skills.
Time to choose a preschool? If so, you may want to check out the Savvy Source, a website for parents by parents. By entering your zip code, you can read about preschools in your area. They've gathered information and seek reviews from other parents. The site has lots of other ideas for preschool crafts, games and books.
U.S. Department of Education: Healthy Start, Grow Smart Series
The "Healthy Start, Grow Smart" series was an initiative of Laura and George W. Bush and sponsored by the Texas Department of Health. It offers downloadable Word and PDF documents in English and Spanish that offer parents advice for caring for babies from birth to 12 months of age.
U.S. Department of Education: Helping Your Child Series
The U.S. Department of Education's "Helping Your Child" publication series offers downloadable PDF booklets and brochures in English and Spanish with practical lessons and activities to help preschool and elementary school children to master reading, understand the value of homework, and develop important skills and values.
U.S. Department of Education: Resources For Parents
This main page for parents leads parents through important issues in their child's education, such as school involvement and finanical aid. There are also helpful downloadable guides and pamphlets.
Welcome to the Joys of Parenthood!: Parents' Guide
Random House produced this collection of tips and practical advice as well as topic-related book suggestions for parents of young children.
Search Colorín Colorado
I plan to definitely do maybe a workshop with my classroom parents and go over the web site with them to give them ideas on how to help.
~ Lilyan P.
