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!