Teacher’s Brain

Literacy Night Ideas

If your goal is to include families to be engaged in your family literacy night at school, you need to be creative. You will find some great ideas here. We will also focus on a Dinosaur Themed Escape Room that the entire school can participate in during Literacy Night. Here are some ideas, tricks and tips for a successful family literacy night.

Know your GOAL

First, you will want to think about what your main objective is for the night. Do you want to build family and school relations, connect the student with the parent, build and excitement about literacy, sell book fair books as a fundraiser or support parents with helping their children at home with literacy skills? Once you know your goals, it will help you think about your activities for the event.

Theme

Know your audience. What challenges will there be? Knowing your challenges ahead of time will help you prevent any mishaps during the night. Are there kids with needs, language challenges, or is it difficult to get your families to participate in school events after hours? Picking a great theme can motivate families to participate. Here are some theme ideas:

  • Camping
  • Reading in Pjs
  • Movie Night
  • Trunk or Treat
  • Superhero Books
  • Hollywood
  • Dinosaur Hunt Escape Room
  • Sports Jersey Night
  • Around the World

Activities

Selecting a theme will help you come up with some great themed activities. For example, if you are doing a camping theme, have tents up, have a special reading about camping, make s’mores at a station, a reading picnic or a photo booth with them catching a BIG FISH. The BIG FISH could be a book. All of the themes could have photo booths, professional storytellers, giveaways and stations full of literacy activities that include the parent.

Help and Reminders

Finally, sending home reminders regularly will increase the participation. Written invitations, phone messages, texts, calendars and emails are all great ways to remind families to participate in the Family Literacy Night. Most importantly, make sure you send a reminder home the day of the event. It helps to provide some incentive of a book giveaway that is high on the student’s interests meter or gift cards.

If you need help running stations, request parent volunteers. You can offer child care where a teacher watches siblings for the parents who are volunteering. You should encourage teachers to participate. One way is to let teachers know the theme, and let them pick an activity they would like to do with families. It doesn’t hurt to offer an incentive to the teacher volunteers either.

Dino-MITE Escape Room for Literacy Night

Kids love dinosaurs! What better way to get parents engaged with their children than an Escape Room with a dinosaur theme that they all can enjoy. Even teachers have fun with this Literacy Night theme! This escape room can be used for literacy night or for a single classroom to reinforce sight words, blends, problem solving and teamwork. They will have to open a box with surprises to escape their room! No need for locks or fancy boxes either!

This escape room is editable, but it comes with two activities that are differentiated. Students will solve 3 clues in order to solve the mystery, find a baby dinosaur and break out of the classroom. There are step-by-step directions, but you can easily change things around to fit your needs. The sight words, blends and riddle are all editable, if needed. It takes about 45 minutes to set up, 30-40 minutes to solve all the clues and 10 minutes to clean up! You will find invites, homework passes, reminders and photos of the easy set up. Check it out!

Want to learn about how to set up your own classroom Escape Room? Check this blog out HERE.

Summer Practice for Kids

Activities for Kids that ENHANCE Summer

If you have ever worried about your kids suffering from summer brain drain, then there are some easy things you can do to keep them motivated to learn all summer.

Kids Reading, Relaxing, Kids On Vacation, Summer


Here is a list of things to tell children’s parents to do with your child at home:

Helpful Tips

1.Crack open a dictionary.  Ask them to find a hard word like, “integrity” in the dictionary. Then, have them explain the meaning to you.

2. Teach your child how to do the laundry.

3. Play a board game with your child.

4. Teach your child to set the table.  Have them count all the silverware.  Reinforce the “game” by offering desert for the right answer.  Continue with teaching them how to make a special dinner.

5. Children at any age love to paint! Give them water colors and paper outside. Let them go crazy with splattering/flicking paint on the paper.  If they have an outdoor playhouse, let them paint it with water colors.  When it rains, it come right off.

6. Encourage your child to tell you a prediction to an ending to a movie or story.

7. Tell your child they can only watch TV or play a video game if they can tell you the time on the clock. (not digital…) 

8. Encourage your child to do a garage sale with you or open a lemonade stand to earn a little extra money.  Tell family members to come visit so they can not only participate, but test them on giving change for items.

9. Father’s Day is often overlooked during the school year, so let your child make a project or go shopping for dad and give them a budget.

10. Ask your child to come up with words that rhyme and challenge them to make a rap using the rhyming words.

11. At bed time, ask your child to sequence the events of their day.

12. Create a new dance move or hand shake with your child. 

13. Do some wood working with your child, but letting them use a hammer and nails to build something like a birdhouse with your supervision.

14. Ask your child to show you a Jumping Jack, Push Up, or Skipping. 

 You would be surprised how many kids can’t do these tasks.

15. Use chalk outside to make Hopscotch. Teach them how to play.

16. Teach your child figure out how to play frisbee or tennis.

Summer Practice for Kids

Sending home summer practice packets for kids is a great way to keep kids actively learning all summer too!

Over 90 printables to review what students should already know from 4th Grade to practice on before they enter 5th Grade.  It has math, literacy, and writing activities.  There is a summer weekly journal for kids to write daily about their summer events.  Parents have suggestions and directions they can do to keep their kids prepared for the next level!

CLICK HERE FOR:

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☀️ Summer Packet for 2nd Grade to 3rd Grade

☀️ Summer Packet for 4th Grade to 5th Grade (NEW)