Family Reading Night

Last spring when I was being recruited for the elementary school's PTA, I asked for an easy job to get my feet wet and because I knew I'd be balancing it with my preschool president role.  I also wanted to work with someone I knew.  I was asked to co-chair Family Reading Night.  I hoped reading night was just kids bringing their favorite book and read quietly to themselves.  Not quite.  It's a little more involved.  Being busy with the preschool and Halloween, the event sort of snuck up on me.  Tonight was the big night.  I was bummed Tom had to miss it, but I had a great sitter help me out.  

Here's the banner in front of the school.  I didn't make this, but it needs some color.  

My co-chair made these stickers for the teachers to put on the kids before sending them home for school so parents could be reminded that our event was tonight.  

 Here's what happens at Family Reading night.  It takes place in the school cafeteria and tons of people come because it's free.  There are crafts; we had two - make a book and make a bookmark.  We also had a raffle with books and journals as prizes, and a book swap.  There is a special guest reader, and we asked Mrs. Robinson, who is also Leo's teacher.

The night is suppose to have a theme.  We decided to piggy-back on the 50th anniversary of the school and have a 50th birthday party theme.  Our raffle featured books published in 1963, and Mrs. Robinson read from "Where the Wild Things Are" and a chapter from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", which were both published in 1963.

I was told that it gets so crowded that no one notices any decorations.  That didn't stop me from making some, like this word garland.

 I made it all by hand and it says "Read Books", of course.

I made two mini-banners with the scraps.  One for the book swap table and one for the raffle.  They were probably completely overlooked, but I couldn't help myself.  

 I also wrapped a bunch of boxes (mostly cereal and cracker boxes) in festive birthday paper to collect the raffle tickets.  The kids each got five tickets and got to put tickets in the boxes that corresponded with the prize they wanted.  There was a Lego book with a figure included; that was, by far, the most popular.

 At the book making station, I wanted to include some "story inspirations".  I drew some little scenes to spark the kids imaginations since it is sometimes hard to get started.  My co-chair's daughter did some too.  Her's were better.

 Book swap area.

 Bookmark making table.

 My kids came with the baby sitter and made some books.

 It got pretty crowded.

 Mrs. Robinson did a great job reading and the kids loved it.

The best part of the event was that it was only an hour long.  That's right, just one hour.  Even though I had been there for two hours before it started, the time flew by and the clean up was pretty easy too.  I'll probably do it again next year, if they let me.