School Family Night Activities
Build relationships and develop a sense of community at your school by hosting family nights every few months. Gather staff to help plan the activities and then open your doors and welcome families in to your school. Kids love spending time at school outside of the school day. Teachers can get to know their students and their parents on a personal level.
-
Family Literacy Night
-
Host a family literacy night at your school. Have children make invitations to give to their parents inviting them to attend the family literacy night. Have teachers read stories to the families. Families can come in their pajamas and bring pillows and blankets. Provide pizza before the reading begins. After the stories are read, set up stations that families can go to with their children to play reading games such as a memory game using sight words. This event works well in conjunction with a school book fair.
Family Math Night
-
Get families together to play math games by planning a family math night. Provide math games that families can play together. Set up tables around the room with a math game and a teacher at each table. Kids love seeing their teachers outside of school hours, and teachers can get to know families while participating in math games. Playing cards can be used to do many math activities. For example, deal out a deck of cards between two people. Each player turns over a card and the first one to multiply the two numbers together and say the answer correctly gets the cards. The person with the most cards at the end wins. A game of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego can provide practice in math and geography as families use a world map to solve clues and try to be the first to identify Carmen's location.
-
Movie Night
-
Plan a movie night for families. Select a movie that all family members can enjoy, taking into consideration some families have younger children. Provide dinner before the movie. Pizza is usually an easy meal to serve and clean up. Also have a popcorn machine where families can purchase popcorn to eat while they enjoy the movie. Families can view the movie in the gym or auditorium and can come in their pajamas and bring pillows and blankets.
Field Night
-
Choose a night in the early fall or later spring for a field night. You want it to still be light outside to host the event. Set up stations out on the field of activities. For example one station can be a tug of war, another might be hula hooping. Families are grouped together and move through the stations enjoying the activities together. Set an amount of time the families will be at each station and then blow a whistle when it is time for them to rotate. The number of stations you set up will be determined by the number of people attending.
-
