We've offered a couple of parent seminars on ADHD, Substance Abuse Awareness, and Internet Safety. We had a nice turnout for the ADHD seminar but for the other two, we had extremely poor turnout like NO ONE came to the Substance Abuse Awareness seminar. Argh!

We're offering our last parent seminar on Feb. 10th. It's the College Funding Night sponsored by American Express Financial Advisors. It's one of the School Family Night activities through this site. We're offering childcare with this one so I'm hoping for a turnout...please note that I said *a* turnout. I don't say "a good turnout" since our experience with the second parent seminar.

Oh yeah, the child obesity issue. Maybe do a workshop at a meeting to kick off Family Fitness Night. Maybe the meeting prior to Family Fitness Night, have a more informative meeting and generate more excitement about the event, but also give parents a lot of information that they wouldn't be able to get on that night.

I love these ideas. Keep 'em coming. I like the Invenstment Workshop because we just got word from a local bank that will help children get savings accounts started and will allow minimal deposits of pennies of the kid wants. Most banks have a minimum to start an account of $100's and deposits have to be a certain minimum too. Well this local bank branch is offering a savings account starter for kids. Maybe we can make it a Workshop during one of our meetings and have a representative from the bank also talk about college investments. Great idea.

I like the staff helping out with a Homework Help Workshop a few times per year to go ove curriculum and answer questions about homework from parents etc. How to help them with homework and make it interesting for parents. That even if your child doesn't have any problems with homework, parents can still come and learn how to reenforce what was learned and quiz the kids etc. LOVE IT!

I like the technology workshop because the parents can go into the computer labs during a meeting and see what the kids work on during their computer lab time. Maybe to again reenforce what they learned in school and let them do it at home as opposed to going on the internet to play games or worse go into chat rooms. Even though our school is K-3, we as parents should still be aware of the risks of the internet as well as the benefits and learning experience. Good one!

Thanks ladies. I'll be expanding on these ideas more. I'd like more ideas if anyone has them.

Our school offers a homework workshop for parents at each grade level, and it's ongoing throughout the year (There's about 3 per grade level-K/1; 2/3; 4/5 per year). They go over reading and math, how they are teaching the curriculum, and how parents should "quiz" the children before a test, how to go over homework, etc. It's very popular, and the children and parents (as well as the classrooms) have benefitted TREMENDOUSLY! The grade level teachers are the ones that run the programs, and are there to answer any questions. Our PTA sets up the tables, supply the refreshments, and cleans up afterwards. The teachers keep telling me what a difference it's making in the classrooms...I'd recommend this to ANY school! The only thing that you really need is a willing staff--for obvious reasons, no one other than the actual classroom teachers can run the programs.

Oh yes, we also had one where an investment counselor explained our state's various college savings programs and showed the whole "if you start saving when the child's age 5 you wind up with x amount, whereas if you start saving 10 years later you have y" bit.

We have had one on safe Internet practices, led by local police from a unit that targets people who solicit minors online (very informative, but scary!), and another on child nutrition and obesity. One that was very popular was on how to talk to your child about sex and what's age-appropriate at each stage. Lots of questions at that one! Oh, and we've also done one on new technology being used in our schools, where parents got to try out the "smart boards" and other nifty equipment that wasn't around when we were in school and see how our kids are using it.