Judy had an exciting answer to providing PACT activities to families with children of any different ages.  Judy designs "Family Learning Community Activities" for the whole family.  This is an outlook towards designing family literacy programming that will take the PACT team in the right direction. 

That outlook also would help both Alecia who is looking for PACT activities that work well with older children and Amy who must deal with age ranges from 2 years old to 11. (Quite an age range!)  A few years ago, Laura Bercovitz designed some literacy -based packaged parent child activities for the Illinois State Library called Story Kits.  One of  the Story Kits, based on the book "Laura Charlotte," is recommended for parents to do with children ages 7 - 10  who have some fine motor skills.   The book is about a special stuffed animal that is handed down through a family.  The associated activity is building a "Marvelous Toy." Younger children, aged four to six years old, would be able to complete the activity with their parent's help. Children younger than four years old could dictate their own marvelous toy's description to their parent and the parent could draw a toy rather than constructing a toy. The activity includes a song, "The Marvelous Toy" and an alternative activity could be drama related. Younger and older sibs might enjoy creating and acting out being a toy.
 
Planning is the key. During parent time, as you prepare the parents to do the activity, discuss and demonstrate how older sibs can help or how younger sibs can be included. Prepare to implement in chunks of time, so that if one age group is not centrally involved at one point, they will be very involved at the next.  Prepare the parents educationally noting that different children are at different stages developmentally but that older children can model for younger and younger children can assist older.  Design creatively and appropriately, prepare thoroughly, and implement flexibly.

How have others handled the challenge of designing PACT for families with children at varied ages and stages?