CHOICES, a literacy program for homeless families, piloted a program at the Women's Emergency Shelter in Champaign, Illinois and later expanded its services to A Woman's Place, a domestic violence shelter, in Urbana, Illinois. The CHOICES program offered weekly language activities for the children and gave mothers information about developing their children's reading readiness skills. The CHOICES program also provided: (1) access to various reading materials; (2) skill level assessment and referral to educational programs; (3) assistance with educational goal setting; (4) education in areas of parenting, job skills, basic reading; and (5) self-esteem activities. Activities were carried out by providing shelter libraries; conducting recruitment, assessment, and referral activities; providing individualized instruction; and holding life skills seminars. Unique challenges were that (1) the number of clients and their children, their needs, and ages varied from daily; (2) finding space for an activity and equipment storage was difficult; (3) and tracking client progress and motivating them was challenging. (The bulk of the document consists of eight appendixes: six sources for families in crisis; "As the World Spins" game; apartment ad bingo; mass transit district madness; children's activities; reading to children; creating puppets; and sample of data collection forms.) (NLA)