Curriculum Night

The last two weeks have been busy!  Every school in my district is required to have a curriculum night.  This provides an opportunities to explain to families about important information about their child's school year.  At my school, we begin in the gym with teacher introductions and then break up in grade levels where families go to classrooms to learn more.  It can be a stressful time of year as you are still establishing relationships with families.  Although you have a "script" prepared, it can be hard to gague what questions families might have as well as what they know about kindergarten.  It varies greatly from year to year!  This year, my grade level has a ton of new to the school families and older siblings where as last year, many of our families had already had a child come through kindergarten.  This changes the information and the format for presenting to families. 

As my team and I thought about this, we wanted to give families ideas about how to have conversations with their children at the end of a long day.  Have you ever asked a 5 or 6 year old about what they did at school at the end of the day?  The responses vary and sometimes include "nothing", "I played", or "I do not remember".  We wanted to encourage families to interact in positive ways.  We collaborated on this as a take home treat to encourage those positive interactions between families and their children.  My awesome teammate typed up the conversation starters and bagged them for perfection. 

 

Building relationships with families is critical to their child experiencing a successful year and school success.  Here's what we came up thanks to pinterest to help us help families understand their important role in their child's success.

 

 

We had a great turnout and parents asked really great questions.  Often times, planning these extra curricular events can be exhausting but once they are over, it is easy to see how critical they are in our success during the school year.  I was thankful that over half of my families can to learn more about kindergarten and how we can support each other during this foundational year of learning!