CCG has a diverse set of engagement opportunities for volunteers, including:

• Summer Splash Days: Volunteers can beat the heat while assisting with a morning splash party. Children ages 0-3 in the program have summer splash days that are also educational. Activities include rubber duck races, bubble bins, and water tables.
• Holiday celebrations: Volunteers help decorate the teachers’ lounge, front desk, and meeting rooms according to the holiday season. This is open for: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Valentine’s Day, Dr. Seuss’s birthday, St. Patrick’s Day, spring celebrations, etc. These celebrations teach children about the calendar year and important cultural traditions. Providing this service through volunteers also saves teachers valuable instructional and classroom preparation time, and it builds morale as a beautification of school grounds.
• Spring and fall reading days: Volunteers visit an early childhood classroom to read an age-appropriate book to children ages 0-3 or 3-5 and participate in a seasonal related activity.
• Great Adventure Hunt/Great Big Jam: CCG’s two annual fundraisers require volunteers to help set up, clean up, and assist with a variety of fun event planning and execution activities as well as valuable revenue-generating activities.
• Teacher Appreciation Week (and throughout the year): Make or buy gifts to show teachers how much they are appreciated. Help ChildCareGroup attract and retain high-quality teachers to serve the children.
• Mobile Science Lab: Volunteers gather a list of approved items to create a STEM Mobile Science Lab that is age-appropriate for the children at any of the centers.
• Educational kits: Volunteer assembly of take-home kits encourages parental engagement beyond the classroom and reinforces classroom lessons. This engagement can be done at ChildCareGroup or a company’s site for those employees who have difficulty leaving their location during the work day. CCG could use more than 25,000 educational kits every year for the weekly parent engagement activities for families.
• In-kind drive: Volunteers can host an in-kind drive at their church, school, or office. ChildCareGroup benefits from donation drives for all kinds of practical supplies used to operate programs (diapers, paper goods, books, art supplies, playground mulch, etc.). Donations are often matchable in value from a federal funder, so this engagement has a financial benefit to ChildCareGroup. Winter clothes and shoes, holiday and birthday gifts, parent engagement incentives (Walmart gift cards), and creative donations are also highly welcome. There is also a program for gently used items, which creatively generates cash revenue for ChildCareGroup through a local partner that operates thrift stores and recycling services. Gently used clothes, shoes, small housewares, and textiles are welcome. Every volunteer hour served at one of the Early Care and Education Centers is subject to a federal match, for a total impact of $80 per hour served.