For our reading night, my daughter's local school does "Night of A Thousand Readers." We ask volunteers from the community and parents to come dressed as the story they're reading. We set each person or group into a different classroom.

We've seen whole families come in as pioneers to read portions of "Little House on the Prarie." Clifford has joined us to read some of his stories, and even I dressed up as a train conductor to read "Polar Express" (before the movie came out).

The kids LOVED being read to by the different characters, and we all gathered for one last story at the end of the night where the kids got to eat a cookie and milk with their parents.

Hi Tadove-

FoxMom had some great suggestions. Thanks for jumping in, FoxMom.

Just in case you haven't read these articles, they are a good place to start to get some great ideas:
Planning Fun School Events, Programs, and Family Nights

Ideas for an engaging science night:
Science Night, CSI Style - PTOToday.com

fun math night ideas:
PTO Today Blog Blog Archive Trick or Treat Math Night
PTO Today Blog Blog Archive Math Mania Night _ Nice

As for Family Reading Nights, we've heard from lots of folks about the success of their events, and they often use themes to build excitement. Also, sometimes the Family Reading Night comes at the end of a read-a-thon and they have prizes to culminate their program that night.

A few fun themes that have been shared:

Camping theme: flashlight reading in one room, read by pretend campfire, s'mores

Strega Nona theme: books & pasta supper

Red carpet: readers are the celebrities and the "paparazzi" takes their pics when they arrive -- dressed for the red carpet.

Love to hear from more leaders about their successful family education nights.

Lisa

Maybe you could get some cool guests to come in and help out-- especially with reading nights-- have someone dress as the cat in the hat and read Dr. Seuss books in one area-- have a book exchange also that night--

For math night-- look at some computer games and board games that would be fun for the kids--- maybe math bingo and have a guest host be the caller-- with math related prizes- flash cards and such-- or a game that involves math to play but in a larger scale-- with life sized dice-- kind of like twister with numbers -- but again larger in size--- or a red light green light game in the gym with numbers instead of read or green--
Good luck!!

I suppose I meant to say Education Nights, instead of Family Fun Nights. (Also, please pardon the typos. I couldn't go back to edit.)

This past year was my first experiences with Family Nights. The movie night was successful; however, the math night and the reading night were complete flops. How do we make these events more exciting? On the math/reading nights the children went to their classrooms and played educational games with their parents. They weren't fun games. I'm the PTO President and I don't even want to go to these family nights again. There has to be a way to pump up these events. Any suggestions? (We did have an ice cream social after each event and that didn't even lure people to come.)