families
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Friday Freebie – Game Night Printables
Happy Friday! Yesterday I shared a list of fun ideas for family engagement events, one of those ideas was to host a family board game night. Today’s freebie is full of printables that are designed for hosting a game night – these would make your job so easy! Go download your set and have a wonderful weekend!
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Unique ideas for family events
Do you ever get tired of the same old literacy nights and holiday parties? Here are some fun, different ideas that your families will want to participate in: Invite families to help with a community service project Take a large group family field trip Host a glow in the dark game night Plan an outdoor movie night for the warmer months Invite a local zoo or nature center to do a presentation Have a mommy and me spa day Plan a teddy bear picnic Set up a coffee bar and encourage parents to spend time with their children before heading to work Host a board game night Put together a…
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Today your child said…
Those four little words can strike fear into the hearts of parents everywhere, and they will quickly find themselves wondering what direction this conversation is going to go. I loved to share things that children said during the day, and I’ve certainly heard hilarious quotes from tiny little mouths, but I’ve also heard children say things that are incredibly insightful. When I share these quotes with parents they are always so happy to have that little window into their child’s day, and it does wonders to build relationships with those parents. They appreciate that I am paying enough attention to their child to remember what he or she said, and…
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Friday Freebie – Valentine Family Activity
Happy Friday! It was a long week – holiday weeks always feel long. Today’s freebie is one that you can stick away for next Valentine’s Day. This Valentine’s Day Family Project is from Teacher’s Breathing Space. I love the concept – send home a heart that the entire family can work together to decorate, and then display everyone’s project in the classroom. What a wonderful family engagement activity! Go download yours and have an amazing weekend!
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Love Tree
There are a ton of ways that you could create a love tree. The basic idea is to take some kind of tree branch – or you could even decorate a small Christmas tree – and hang paper hearts from the branches, similar to a thankful tree that you might do for Thanksgiving, but in this case ask parents, family members and your students to write down the things or people that they love. It’s an easy enough way to create a visual of all the things and people that are important to us. I’ve got a little twist for you. Instead of just writing down the names of things…
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Family Valentine Station
Valentine’s Day is the perfect holiday for celebrating families because it is all about love. Focusing on the love between family members is also a great way to make Valentine’s Day relevant for our youngest learners. I always spent a lot of time helping my students understand that Valentine’s Day is a special day where we get to make sure the people that we love know how much we love them. We would make valentine’s for our family members, friends, and the special people in our lives. I recently thought of a way to extend this that I wish I would have done when I was in the classroom –…
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Friday Freebie – Family Engagement Calendar
Happy Friday! I have found the perfect Friday Freebie for Family February – say that five times fast! Check out this Family Engagement calendar from Designed by Miss G. Now, I know that this calendar is for September, but it is is such a great idea that I just had to share. She also has freebies for October and November. Stick them in your files for next year and you’ll be glad that your family engagement activities have already been planned come next fall!
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Using family photos in the classroom
The easiest way to start any family engagement effort is to begin collecting photos from each of your families. There are so many ways that these can be used in the classroom. Decorate a quiet space with the photos and children can sit there and look at their family’s photo when they are feeling sad or need a little reassurance. Use them to help the children get to know each other Talk about family structures and compare similarities and differences Look at each family member’s physical characteristics Practice naming each family member and write their names Of course the most difficult piece of this work is actually getting families to…
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Beyond the family survey
As a teacher I was a huge fan of the family survey. It helped me learn the answers to very specific questions about children and their families (who lives with you? Is your child afraid of anything? What are your child’s favorite foods?). As a parent, I just filled out one of these surveys for my daughter’s class the other day, and when I was done it felt like I hadn’t really given her teachers a lot of information. It certainly wasn’t going to help them get to know her better, and at this age the answers change so regularly that they may not even be relevant in a month…
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Family February
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ve probably noticed that I often dedicate each week to a specific topic, and when I started planning for this week the topic that I had in mind was engaging families in classroom activities. But of course, as I started thinking about that specific topic I came up with way more than a week’s worth of posts. So I’m going to try something new, I’m devoting the entire month of February to topics related to partnering with families and promoting strong families. I think the timing is perfect, so much of what we talk about in February is related to love,…
