Programs that promote family literacy, as defined by Hannon (2003), are "programs to teach literacy that acknowledge and make use of learners' family relationships and engagement in family literacy practices." Why are such programs important for young learners? According to Livingston and Wirt (2003), children who have homes with books, and parents who read these books, show higher levels of reading skills and knowledge than children whose homes are less literacy rich. A study by the U.S. Department of Education (2001) provides further evidence that home-school connections are important. In this study, student progress in 71 high poverty schools was tracked as these students moved from third grade through fifth grade. Students from families that had strong parental outreach from schools showed a 50 percent higher growth in reading scores than students from families with low levels of parental outreach from schools. Another argument for programs that support literacy is the fact that when children are read to frequently, they begin to develop the skills needed to read successfully (Darling, 2005; Morrow and Young, 1997; Strickland and Morrow, 1990). With this information in mind, a family literacy project was developed with two main objectives: (1) to encourage parent/child participation in literacy activities and (2) to give preservice teachers the opportunity to develop literacy activities for families to engage in together.