Parent Parties!
What: Parties for Families
Why: To build relationships and teach
When: Start first month of school and continue each month until the end of  school.

Parent parties help you build relationships with families!  Every PP must have food, music and fun.
Organization
Prepared
No longer than one hour in length.
No children

Here are some examples of each of my months:

August: Ice Breaker (you want families to feel comfortable)  This will set the tone for the rest of the year. Classroom tour, school tour, explain rules, expectations, literacy bags and what we will be doing during the year. 

September: Explain social media and sign up for accounts. Have PTO donate a school t-shirt to each parent/family.

October: Literacy Vocab/activities for home (invite librarian to help with an activity).  Everyone goes home with a free book.  I collect these from Scholastic Books.

November: Cooking for Families. Cook and send home recipes, invite a nutritionist to speak. Give out a cookbook or recipes. 

December: Math Meeting  (Developmental Milestones and stages children are in).  Have a home therapist come and provide ideas and topics they can do at home.  

January: Invite outside resource to help you: Government assistance, Dentist, physical therapist.  Provide activities to help with children at home.  Send home a coupon to somewhere they can go eat with their families.  These can be donated.

February: Science Ideas. Send home a Science bag with some sort of experiment they can do with their child.

March: What kinds of activities can you be doing with your families this Spring? Invite a speaker on how to spend time with your families outside.  Send home things they can work on.

April: What can families do to help their children this summer?

May: Family Bash.  Last Parent Party. 

Here is the link to a Parent Party Presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ6zs17wVf8
Here is a link to the article I wrote on PP: http://inservice.ascd.org/parent-parties-teaching-and-learning-fun/