TK/K Literacy and STEM Family Night

 This was our first family night of the year. Since it was for 4 and 5 year olds, I decided to lean more towards literacy. My original goal last year was to get parents focused on reading aloud to their children and then incorporating activities to use as follow-up to the books. I quickly learned that family night was not the right venue for practicing this. It was a little too hectic, and even more so this year. Last year I began by modeling a read-aloud; I did not do that again this year.

Last year we had 16 out of 48 families represented. It was our first year, and I was happy with that percentage. This year we had 30 out of 50 families. I was floored! My goal was 20. Each family was given a book cutout which let them know where to begin rotations. We all congregated in one room for directions and then dispersed. Rotations were supposed to be 20 minutes, but the leaders could tell that was too long, and we just cut the times down. (Next year we will change the times from 1.5 hours to 1 hour.)

Everyone seemed to have a great time; this observation was reinforced by positive feedback on end-of-the-night surveys. Most of the activities were attached to a book; some were stand-alone. From last year to this, I added several activities which helped with the larger crowd. There was a staff member in each of the three rooms along with some high school girls who came to help. I could not have pulled it off without all of these people! 

Below is a list of the activities, some accompanied by some sweet pictures:

• Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom -- create a tree and add as many letters to it as you can without it falling

• No! -- Using a bag of select materials, create your name on a sheet of cardstock

• Snack of alphabet cookies and milk
• Magnetic/Non-magnetic activity (Big hit)
• Dump Truck Duck -- Some toy trucks (deleting this next year)
• The Grouchy Ladybug -- Large plastic insects
• Old MacDonald Had a Farm -- Farm animal finger puppets

• Engineering Challenge -- I printed pictures of world-famous structures. The kids had to select which building material might best recreate each structure (new this year and was a huge hit)

• Little House in the Big Woods (picture book) -- This neat little house with bear family I found

• Coloring bookmarks (a favorite)
• A puzzle
• Blanket fort with a flashlight and a shadow book
• Richard Scary Busytown with magnatiles and magna-people
• A photo op area with stuffed book characters

We all had a really great time. It is events like this that make me even happier that I am a librarian. I love connecting people of all ages with books and then connecting books to as many other things as possible!

I have attached some resources below. Some are in PDF form, but if you upload them on Canva, you can change whatever you need to change to suit your needs.

Family Night Invitation

Magnetic/Non-magnetic Sheet

Read Aloud Ideas

Read Aloud List (TK/K)