Family Night Potluck

In lieu of participating in student led conferences this fall, we have decided to host two family nights. Family days are a part of our program and occur every second Friday morning. With many families working outside of the home during the school day, it makes it difficult for every family to attend on alternate Friday mornings. We wanted to honour the schedules of each of our families and attempt to engage more members of our classroom community.

Tonight was a huge success! Pre-kinders and their families were given a homework assignment... to cook together and take photo evidence while doing so. Our goal was to encourage families to spend quality time together engaging in an activity that does not add additional stress to the family. Cooking is something that needs to be done daily and families are then not required to purchase anything out of the ordinary to complete the activity. We also hope that this homework assignment will encourage families to cook together more often.

Children love to cook and gain so many amazing life skills while doing so. Learning about nutrition, personal hygiene, kitchen cleanliness, measurement, counting, numbers, fine motor, gross motor, kitchen safety, vocabulary, reading, oral language, collaboration, science, art, culture... the list of developmental skills is truly endless.

Asking families to take photographs of the process is not a check in but rather to help them understand the value of documentation and making visible the learning that occurs through each life experience.

Having a potluck allowed for families to sit down and eat a meal together which often does not happen with everyone's very busy schedule. This also offered an opportunity for our classroom community to create deeper connections by sharing a meal and engaging in conversation.

There were so many amazing items to choose from and each student was so proud of the dish that they had created. This also gave families new items to add to their rotating dinner menu.

 

Following dinner, invitations were set throughout our learning environment to create a family portrait. It was amazing for families to engage in side-by-side learning with their child as well as experience provocations just as their children do each day they attend school. Materials available to create the portraits included liquid watercolours, clay and loose parts.

D's family in their own country.

L's family created out of clay.

A's family created out of loose parts.

H and his mom creating their family using watercolours.

We are creating a large documentation panel to represent the entire experience. The original family portraits that were created will be displayed within this panel. Photographs of the loose parts portraits will be included.

In the future, if we were to host a potluck, I would like to ask families to send a copy of their recipe to be shared with our classroom community. I loved this experience and I feel that bonds were created amongst families by coming together to share a meal. It was exciting to observe families engaging in our daily classroom practices!

Facebook in the Classroom

Facebook has been a part of my kinder classroom for the last five years. It began as a communication tool with parents. I found that traditional communication methods with parents were not working as they were not reading newsletters or responding to messages in the student's communicators and mailbags. I was spending copious amounts of time creating letters and writing to parents/guardians only to find out that families were uninformed of our daily happenings. Facebook allows a post to be created within only a few minutes which would save a lot of valuable time! I knew that almost everyone had facebook and utilised it daily, so why not begin a class facebook account?

I began adding families in our classroom and let them know about the account as well. I soon had the majority of families looking at the facebook account on a daily basis which was apparent by the number of likes to posts as well as comments.

I would post each day about something that had happened throughout our school day as well as include photographs with the student's faces covered for privacy reasons. That being said, our account was private and only those associated with the classroom were welcome to join. Both my principal and vice principal are part of the group which keeps them up to date in regards to what is happening in our classroom. 

In addition to the comments and likes from families, I had many parents/guardians using the messenger function on a regular basis to share information with me about their child or to check in with regard to their child's progress.

At the end of my first year utilising facebook as a communication and family engagement tool, I began to wonder if it was effective enough and if families were receiving enough information to be engaged in their child's school experience. After speaking with several parents it was noted that they would like to have pictures posted that showed their child's face. I then sent out permission letters to be signed by parents/guardians so that I could then post images of children without any editing. I had all forms returned indicating that each family would like to have images of their child posted. It was agreed upon that the photos could not be shared or printed due to privacy. If an image only included one child, the family of the child was welcome to share or print the image.

Relieving the account of image restrictions also allowed me to begin posting videos of our day. Families loved watching each clip and it allowed many parents/guardians that work during the school day to feel like they had joined us in the classroom.

The students and families that were part of my initial facebook trial fell in love with this method of receiving documentation. The families actually requested that the following year teacher create a class facebook as they had become accustomed to the daily communication.  

Currently, I have two facebook accounts to share documentation and information with families. I have one account or my pre-kindergarten class as well as one account for my grade one math class. Families are still so appreciative of this practice and make a point of letting me know on a regular basis. Our kindergarten teacher and grade four teacher now use facebook as a means of communication and engagement as well.

 For those families that do not have facebook, they are welcome to access that account while they are at the school. During family engagement days/evenings I have the account open so that families can look at what we have been doing. This is also a great way to promote the use of the account as it serves as a reminder to all of the families.