We hold parent and family night, and we have had a great turn out on Family Game night. Set up 30 or so tables in the gym or cafeteria and place diffent board games on each. Have families bring their fav games and serve popcorn and drinks. We had over 300 people turn out last time, with a total enrollment of 425. We also do Movie nights, the principal will choose a family oriented movie and we rent a big screen and everyone hangs out on the floor in the gym on bean bags and big pillows for a relaxing free movie night.
Just wanted to let you all know about my first Parent Ed program Tues night. The speaker mostly talked about dealing with kids during a time of crisis. We had over 20 attend! At first I was very disappointed (this is with a school of 650+ kids). But I have been told that this was a great start. At least I was in double-digits... LOL. My next one will be about Money Management which I think will bring more. I had people fill out a survey and they all gave it great reviews.
I would think that as a PTO/PTA, we should do whatever it takes to better the lives of our kids. Some of us need Parenting advice. I have a Dr/Professor at a local university coming to talk to our parents for FREE. There are free resources out there. You just have to ask. Perhaps your school counselor could also speak? We should also be a support system for our parents (But that's my personal oppinion). If it enables our parents to be better parents (ie communicators), then it justifies getting any help.
We attempted this last year and were pleased with the result. Our principal's advice was to keep it simple on our budget and resources at least to start to see what the parent turnout would be. Our District's Curriculum Director came in to talk about Reading Interventions Strategies for one hour. The turnout was moderate and the response was positive. We gave her a gift certificate as a thank you. We thought about doing more general parenting topics, but our principal convinced us that we should focus on learning since we are a PTO. This fall we will have a small group of our teachers do a math presentation (how we can help our children enjoy and excel at math). We chose to use our teachers and district staff to keep things simpler, spend less money and, most important, give our parents another opportunity to see what a fine pool of resources we have in our community. Hope this helps!
Our school counselor presented a parenting series entitled "Parenting with Love and Logic" from the book of the same name written by Foster Cline, MD and Jim Fay. It is a wonderful series which is very helpful for teaching children responsibility and teaching parents new discipline techniques. It can be broken down into smaller sessions (1 to 2 hours at a time) and spread out over several weeks. We had a very good turnout and the parents really appreciated the helpful advice that was presented.
I think someone mentioned this but internet safety would be nice, How to help children with homework and projects, how to de stress your child, and gor the older grades topics on drug use and how to STAY involved with your kids when they do not want you to.
