It’s not easy to be heard in Washington, D.C., even about an issue as important as affordable, high-quality child care and preschool. There’s a lot of competition for our elected leaders’ attention: pinstripe-suited lobbyists, 24-hour news channels, and lots of partisan bickering.

That’s why we’re getting creative, and we need your help to pull it off!

We’re organizing moms and kids from across the country to play a GIANT (like 40-foot-wide) game of Chutes and Ladders on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. We want your senators to play with us.

Can you take two seconds and click a few buttons to invite your senators to play the game with us and see just how much early learning moves our children and our country forward?

http://action.momsrising.org/letter/Giant_Game/

** It's easy to invite your senators!  All you have to do is click the buttons and we'll do the rest, but it is super important to take two seconds to invite them now: If your senators receive personal invites from people like you in their district, they’re more likely to join us at this important game.  Our goal is to have at least ten U.S. senators play the game with us—and we can only reach this goal with your help.

How will playing a giant board game at the Capitol get us closer to affordable high-quality preschool and child care?

We want our leaders to be talking about early learning. A giant board game is a great conversation starter. When was the last time you saw a life-sized Chutes and Ladders game? No one in the vicinity will be able to ignore us.

Every ladder on our board highlights how early learning moves our country forward: for instance, how children who have high-quality early learning experiences are more likely to graduate from high school and gain stable employment, and are less likely to be arrested.  Every chute on our board highlights how our country slips behind when child care for an infant or toddler costs more than public college tuition (as it does in many states).

To continue this super-sized conversation starter, we’ll make sure every Senate office at the Capitol receives our collection of stories from families across the country struggling to find and afford preschool and child care. It should be a day that really gets our Capitol buzzing. But we need your help to make it happen!

Take a moment to ask your senators to play the game with us!

http://action.momsrising.org/letter/Giant_Game/

Ask two or three friends to invite their senators too by simply forwarding this email.  We want all the senators to know we REALLY want them to play with us!

**And don't worry, we'll be sure to let you know if they make it, and we’ll take plenty of pictures!

Together we can make a BIG impact for families in this country.

P.S. Near D.C. on September 18?  Come and play Chutes and Ladders with us! Read all the details and RSVP here.

P.P.S. Huge thanks to the Starting Strong Coalition and the National Women's Law Center for all the work they are doing to move this game forward!