Are you doing any work around early math or is that subsumed in the science work?  Let me know.  Also we are interested in 0- 5 as well.  Great job!  The young people we work with asked for earlier exposures to STEM.  Do you have any people in the San Francisco Bay Area you are working with?

Thank you, Courtney! We have collected some data from our community events and family packs and have written a few smaller articles about the interactions between parent/caregiver and child. A graduate student working on the project also focused her dissertation research on the way that families utilized the packs. She went into the homes of 5 families and recorded them completing the activities and then analyzed the video. These findings and lessons learned in Phase I on ways to collect and analyze the family data are being used as we move forward with Phase II - which will specifically look to the family impact. 

Below are the citations for the articles/ dissertations on the family component of the project:

Reinhart, M., Bloomquist, D., Strickler-Eppard, L., Czerniak, C. M., Gilbert, A., Kaderavek, J. & Molitor, S. C. (2016), Taking science home: Connecting schools and families through science activity packs for young children. School Science and Mathematics, 116(1), 3–16.

Strickler-Eppard, L., Bloomquist, D., Gilbert, A., Reinhart, M., & Czerniak, C. (2016). Research to Practice, Taking science home: Connecting schools and families through early childhood science activity packs for young children. School Science and Mathematics Association (www.ssma.org).

Strickler-Eppard, L. (2016). A Detailed Analysis of Family Utilization of Science Activity Packs. (Electronic Thesis or Dissertation). Retrieved from https://etd.ohiolink.edu/

Thank you for sharing this information and these resources. I think it's great that you are going to look at family impact in Phase II, and that you are approaching this phase of the study based on lessons learned in Phase I. Are there any specific lessons that you learned that surprised you and/or are changing the way you initially thought you would approach this phase of the project?

In Phase I, the entire group received PD and the family engagement components of the program and yielded the gains shared; however, it was not possible to determine how much each aspect of the program contributed to those gains. This lead to the focus of Phase II being aimed at determining what, if any, additive effect the family component has on student achievement gains.

I like the Phase II focus on exploring impact in rural communities. What benefits in particular do you think rural communities can gain from this type of early childhood STEM programming?

Hi, Kelly. We spent a great deal of time designing and revising the materials that we provided to families, both in terms of the activity sheets that went along with the take home packs as well as the event guides they were provided with at the community events. All of the materials included "Talking Tips", which provided discourse strategies to help parents engage their child, as well as example questions that parents could use to get the conversation going. We never tracked the number of families that completed the packs at home, but many teachers did collect the recording sheets we included and shared them with us. Teachers have reported very positive feedback from students and families on the packs. There was a dissertation, which is cited above, that came out of the project that focused on the way the packs were used by families as well as the interactions between family members during the activity.