Examining “Meet Up and Play” Sessions with Adults and Young Children Experiencing Homelessness/Housing Instability

• In Event: Literacy Everywhere!: Designing Supports for Early Literacy and Awareness for Families Experiencing Housing Instability

Abstract

Utilizing earlier project findings, we created Family Play Kits (FPK) for children ages 0-5 experiencing homelessness/housing instability (H/HI). “Meet Up and Play” sessions (MUPs) with parents/caregivers and children were conducted with the FPK. In this paper we qualitatively examine their behaviors and interactions to address the question “in what ways do adults and 0–5-year-old children who are experiencing H/HI engage with books and toys?”
We view early childhood learning and development as occurring within a network of responsive relationships (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2004). Important to this work is the notion of “funds of knowledge” (González, Moll & Amanti, 2005) and Chavkin & Williams’s findings regarding the foundational role parents/guardians play in establishing children’s attitudes toward learning (1989).
Recruitment was via flyers posted at libraries and spaces frequented by families (e.g., laundromats, grocery stores). Families were given $25 gift cards, and FPKs they chose. MUP sessions, held in libraries’ private meeting rooms, lasted 25 – 45 minutes. Adult/child dyads were observed while interacting with at least 2 FPKs. Sixteen families and 22 different children (ages 1 month to 5 years), participated. Multiple children participated from 5 families. All children were accompanied by their mother, grandmother, or in one case, an aunt.
Kits were designed for infants (0 – 6 months), early toddlers (6 – 18 months), late toddlers (1.5 – 3 years), and preschoolers (3 – 5 years). All contained age-appropriate open-ended playthings with high potential for “serve-and-return" interactions, such as blocks, finger puppets, satin scarves, mini-vehicles, and bubbles. At least 5 age-appropriate books were also in each kit along with a soft doll. MUP participants chose 2 from 3 possible kits during a session.
Data consisted of checklists and field notes collected by at least 2 members of the research team. Observers checked if behaviors such as questioning, joint-handling, encouragement, and commanding were evident during a MUP. Observers also rated overall engagement and balance of child/adult activity. Additionally, observers wrote field notes with examples of actions and utterances. Descriptive analyses for this paper focused on the checklists, using the fieldnotes for examples, to examine the behaviors and interactions exhibited during MUPs.
Analyses revealed half of the parents/caregivers asked the children questions, though the questions were primarily closed (e.g., “What color is this?,” “Do you see the turtle?”). A third gave children directions or commands, and a third used the materials in creative ways. Observers noted that half of adults and children were highly engaged with materials and seemed very comfortable. Observers reported that about half of the interactions were balanced with adult and child equally driving the activity.
Deficit-forward views about H/HI parents’ support for their children’s learning abound. Yet even these preliminary results provide evidence that parents/caregivers draw upon funds of knowledge to engage in interactions that can foster children’s early learning and development. Parents/caregivers reported that the FPKs were helpful tools for facilitating play and talk with their children. These findings suggest that providing vulnerable H/HI families with supportive FPK can yield literacy-fostering interactions with the potential to positively impact early language and literacy development.

Authors

• Susanna E. Hapgood, University of Toledo

• Kelly Gobrogge, University of Toledo