We will have our first ever family fun book night in the spring. It will be held one night when we have our week long bookfair. I need ideas for activities. We would like to bring in people to read but we can not bring in an author since that has to be a school system wide event. We want to increase book fair sales so the book swap is out. What has worked for your schools in the past? We are K-5 with apx 440 kids. Thanks!

Books read to Kindergarteners should count toward their goal considering like you said that they are just beginning to read.

Great ideas! Thank you so much!

Ohohohoho Pick me Mista Kotta!!!!

For K-2nd we did books read (each 25 pgs counted as a book)- 15 books gained you the next reading lvl (8 lvls per round)

for 3-5th we did pages read (200-300 (I forgot which one) pgs moved you to next level (8 lvls per round)

1 round = Gold Medal for reading at end of year (can only win 1)

We did 3 last year in conjunction with our reading program. Two of them we did at Family Events and one we did during the school day.

The children could start bringing the books in two weeks before the event so we had the books all sorted by age and a great selection right from the beginning of the event. To track who brought in books and how many, we provided the teachers with a class roster and they simply marked the number of books brought in next to the child's name. We collected the rosters and books from the classrooms the morning of the event.

Families could send in as many books as they liked but we limited the amount they could take to 5. The only problem we encountered was having a lot of preschool books, but a shortage of books for older kids. We solved that in the later exchanges by using cash donations we received for the reading program to purchase some books from our book fair.

The exchanges during the family event were nice, but the one we did during the school day was the most successful. We thought we needed to do at least one during the school day so that all the students could participate. We also noted in our flyers that families could send extra books if they wanted that could be used by children who did not have a book to bring in, but would like the chance to participate. Basically, if a child wanted to come down and pick out a book, we let them. We had so many books it wasn't an issue.

After the last exchange, which we did at the end of the year, we let the teachers come down and pick out any books they would like for their classrooms. They loved that.

We had also used cash donations and book fair bonus profit to purchase a large quantity of new books to use as prizes during our spring carnival. We had a lot of leftovers, so we put those into the last exchange and the teacher pick up. Many children were able to come and get a brand new book!

If you have any other questions, just ask.

Yeah-I was a little stuck on that. Since we have such a range is classroom size & ages, I didn't want to do "the class w/the longest chain wins". I thought about the classroom goal as a way to avoid say,the 8th grade beating pre-k & k because most of the little ones are just learning to read. Thanks-that is a good idea~ some sort of party/reward for each class that meets their goal?

I also thought about a book swap at the Family Night~ a gently used/new book as admission to the event, w/any extras going to the school library (or the public library for any adult books.) Anyone ever done a book swap?