Teachers, I need help with a project for family reading night.?

Question

We have two events like this per year. Last year was my first year as a teacher. We did the family reading night in late November, so we did a Christmas type of holiday theme around the Polar Express book. We did an excellent job. Each grade level did a different theme. I teach second grade.
Anyway, this year it is going to be a fall or Halloween theme. We have little time to prepare for this since it was given with short notice. We have to do fun reading activities centered around fluency, comprehension, phonics, etc. Plus we have to send home some type of activity that the family could complete with their child.
What would be a good idea for a theme and some activities. I am stumped. I want this to go as well as it did last year and I am so worried about this.

Thank you. Any ideas are greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The book, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams is great.
1. You can create a book - Who Is Not Afraid of Anything (insert student's name). Students will complete the pages with their names and something they are not afraid of.
2. There are lots of sounds and repetition, /cl/, /ch/, and /sh/in the book to do phonics around.
3. Build a classroom scarecrow - supply clothing, shoes, hat, gloves
4. This book is also great for sequencing.Cut apart the story strips and put them in order to tell the story.Add capital letters and punctuation marks where they belong.
5. You can sing the story: For ex,
Little old lady
Little old lady
In the forest... Go through the sequencing of the book.
6. You can do a writing activity
What could you do with a scarecrow?
You could...
And you could...
It would be fun to...
7. You could do research on pumpkins.
Where are pumpkins found.
How big does a pumpkin grow?
8. You could use the 5 senses to describe the forest in the story.

Answer 2

You could use pumpkins as the theme. This is still Halloween/fall but won't offend anyone like witches, vampires, and ghosts might. There are lots of pumpkin books that you can use.

For fluency you can do a choral reading of a book like Five Little Pumpkins, and the whole family can participate.

There's also the book about the square pumpkin that didn't fit in (I can't remember the title) and I believe there's also a cartoon that goes with it.

For a take home activity kids can make a pumpkin from construction paper and then write a story about it, or they can tell a story or describe Halloween night from the pumpkin's point of view.

Depending on the book there are a lot of comprehension activities, like a pumpkin jeopardy-style game, and writing events from a story on pumpkin cutouts, then having the kids put them in order.

Phonics can be addressed by writing pumpkin vertically and kids write all the words they can think of that begin with each letter. This can also be used to write a pumpkin poem.

Another take home activity can be to have a simple pumpkin recipe available for families to try. The recipe can use pictures and words if necessary.

You can read about how pumpkins grow, uses for pumpkins, and how pumpkin carving got started.

Decorating would be easy, and you could even set up a pumpkin patch corner. Pumpkin leaf bags are inexpensive, and paper bags can be painted and decorated and used as decorations or in the activities.

Good luck!

Answer 3

I'm not a teacher, but if you live somewhere where they have trees that have colored leaves in the fall, you could have the families (and kids) collect a few leaves of different colors, and create a small book and stick dried leaves on pages. Then the kids could write (or draw?...or both) about the cool stuff they did this year.