Holly,
We had our first Pajama Reading Night (pj's were optional, of course!) this year... it was my favorite event of the year! We invited our families to have a dinner of strawberry waffles and sausage. Then, our school literary group performed Native American tales on the stage. After this, kids and parents went to different venues to hear different stories... for example, in one room we had two teachers doing Green Eggs and Ham in English and Spanish, in the other we had a police officer reading , and in the third the local (not school)librarian was reading her favorite stories. Each session lasted 1/2 hour and the kids were free to come and go as they wished. The most popular room of the might was our school counselor Walter reading Walter the Farting Dog! After each session, we raffled of books and other prizes we had donated by area businesses. We also sold popcorn. We also set up a photo backdrop that looked like a bedtime scene and took pictures of families for a dollar.
We'll be tweaking things a bit this year... we want to find a way for older students (5th and 6th graders) to be more involved, we want to get even more community members involved, and popcorn was way too messy! Hope this gives you some ideas though...
Kelley
Madison PTO
Mount Vernon, WA
We have family reading nights about every 3mths. We combine it with our TAPS meeting. (TEACHERS AND PARENTS OF SAPULPA,OK) This year we started the meeting at 6pm, we ate @ 6:30pm,w/a TAPS membership you got 2 slices of pizza per family member and a pop. Without a memebership, pizza was a dollar and pop $.50. At 7pm Family Reading starts and sometimes we have a "special guest" read to the children. They love that. Doing this, not only did we have about a 50% increase in family participation, but I think also it gave families atleast one meal time of togetherness. Hope this helps. O' we sell our memberships for $10 and it covers all the AR nights. Not a huge profit, but seeing the families together makes up for the loss.
Misty Jones This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
How many of you do or have tried the "read & feed" for your Family Reading Night? We are going to try this to get more families to participate in ours this year. We do ours during Nevada Reading Week which includes many activities along with a Story Telling Night (which was really fun last year). We're considering doing the read with your child, make a bookmark (JoAnn's has some way cute foam book mark kits for summer that are very inexpensive-especially with their 40% off coupons), and enjoy a free dinner (spaghetti) after.
I'd appreciate any other ideas or just sharing what you've done that has been successful or not.
