These facilitator guides provide a basic framework to adapt the Family Creative Learning program model. It includes our photo documentation and strategies to illustrate how we implemented these workshops across multiple sites. These guides are for educators, community center staff, and volunteers interested in engaging their young people and their families to become designers and inventors in their community.

  • Family Creative Learning Facilitator Guide - ScratchJr Edition

    Last updated July 2022

  • Family Creative Learning Facilitator Guide - Scratch and Makey Makey Edition

    Last updated June 2017

In these guides, you will find information about:

Imagining
What will your Family Creative Learning look like? This section includes an overview of the FCL framework and questions to reflect on your implementation.

Documenting
How can we make learning visible to families and facilitators? This section includes strategies to use documentation (e.g. photos, notes) to make sense of learning together.

Preparing
What do you need to get ready for your workshops? This section includes information on recruiting families, designing your space, and preparing materials.

Facilitating
How can you support your learners? This section details how you can build a team of facilitators, how you will work together, and how to document the workshops.

Workshopping

What happens each day? In each of the workshop, you will learn about preparing for, reflecting on, and facilitating each day.

Appendix

The appendix includes useful forms, handouts, and printed activities.


Frequently asked questions

Who is this facilitator guide for?
This guide is for educators, community center staff, and volunteers interested in engaging their young people and their families to become designers and inventors in their community.

How many workshops are there?
Depending on which version you implement, Family Creative Learning consists of 4-5 workshops, each about 2 hours long.

When do you typically conduct the workshops?
We suggest conducting the workshops once a week in the evenings (after parents are typically done with work) and we highly recommend starting every workshop with a dinner.

How many families typically participate?
The number of families that can attend depends on your resources, such as space, computing tools, materials, facilitators, and recruitment. In general, we try to have a device for every two people and a facilitator for every 3 to 4 families. In our past workshops, we have had the number of participants range from 15 to 70 people.

What do families do in the workshops?
In early workshops, families explore the creative technologies. In the later workshops, they collaborate on a family project that they share in a community showcase in the last workshop.

Connect with Us!

If you’ve tried something from these guides or facilitated your own Family Creative Learning workshop series we would love to hear from you. Send us a message and let us know how it went.