01 November 2015

Family Literacy Night- Campfires & Tents!


Family Literacy Night Camping theme


Family Literacy Night this year was a camping theme.  We had a great turn out and it was a lot of fun!  Our family nights revolve around literacy and math activities, parent information, and a free dinner for our families.  We plan our fall night for the same night at parent/teacher conferences and book fair.  By having all these events in one night, we all get more families to come in to see us.

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme

These are just some of the supplies we used and prepared for our family night.  Lots of books, fluency bags (both reading and math), and smores snacks!

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme

From the moment families step into the gym, they are coming into our Camp Learn A Lot.  This design and our table designs are by Mandy over at Teaching with Simplicity. 

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme

Our materials were set up on these tables.  Families signed in, were given a fluency bag for their child's grade level, a math fluency bag, and a timer if they didn't have one on their phone.  

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme

Our focus at school has been building reading fluency and math fact fluency.  We intentionally set our family night to revolve around these areas so parents could be informed with how well their child was doing in these areas.  This night was more about informing parents rather than just fun activities.  

After the parent and child completed their fluency activities, they came back to our tables and each child was given a free book (dollar sales at Scholastic are a huge help for this) and a bag of Smores.  The bags had miniature marshmallows, chocolate chips, and graham cereal.

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme Fluency Bags

These were my fluency bags organized by grade levels and the parent sign in area.

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme Fluency Bags

My fluency bags contained directions on colored paper, fluency passage (one for the parent to mark on and another copy for the student to read from), and a sticky note for their words correct per minute score to be written on.  The reading passages came from Reading A-Z.

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme Fluency Bags

We do not assess words per minute at this time of the year for kindergarten or first grade, so those grade level baggies contained stories and reading rubrics instead of fluency passages.

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme Fluency Bags

After getting a fluency bag from me, students also got a math baggie from Mandy so parents could determine how well their child was doing with recalling math facts.

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme Fluency Trees

These are our Fluency Trees!  We divided our trees by grade level bands.

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme Fluency Trees

Sticky notes with the students' scores were then placed on the trees.  They looked so pretty and colorful!

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme

We decorated the gym in our camping theme with tents, chairs, and campfires.   Families sat around the campfire to read and work their math problems.  

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme

The students really enjoyed the tents and reading inside them!  It was so much fun to see them inside reading.


Family Literacy Night Camping Theme

Campfire rings in each of our campsites!

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme

These were the table decorations as our families ate their chili and hot dog supper.  Mandy created these!

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme

We even had a photo booth for families to take pictures of each other!  Looks so real with that starry background.

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme

Our superintendent was able to get us some bikes for our drawing!  The kids were beyond excited about winning a bike from the drawing!

Family Literacy Night Camping Theme

We also had a drawing for Walmart gift cards for the parents.  With food, fun activities, and prizes, your family night is almost guaranteed to be a huge success!!

These wonderful ideas for having a camping theme came from Scholastic.  I found their post on using this theme for family night (read about it here) and adapted it to fit our needs.  Thank you Scholastic!


You can read about our other Family Literacy Nights by clicking here and here.







8 comments:

  1. Wow Lori. That was obviously a ton of work, but I'm not surprised that you pulled it off so well. Nicely done!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Tammy! It was a lot of work, but fun too!

      Delete
  2. Wow! That is amazing....and (like Tammy said) looks like a ton of work! What a great way to get parents involved in their child's learning.

    Katie
    Mind Sparks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Katie, that was our goal- get the parents involved in what their child could do and what they need to do next. Thanks for stopping by!

      Delete
  3. Hi Lori! This is great. Do you have any of the fluency information for sale?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! The fluency passages that we used are from Reading A-Z. You can get some of the passages free and the rest through a subscription. Hope that helps you!

      Delete
  4. Our third grade team loves this idea! Are the fluency direction pages available to download?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am so glad that you like the campfire idea! I don't have the fluency directions available. They are just a simple direction page tailored to our school. I included how to time the student reading and to mark the errors. I kept the directions simple and to the point to make it easy on parents. Thank you for coming by!

      Delete