Hello. I am attaching the info I have been sending so everyone can read:
I am in charge of Parent Programs this year, but was involved in Family Fun Nights last year. We had a Math night a couple of weeks ago where a woman used a deck of cards and some dice. We played about 6 different games, adding up the values, etc. She used an overhead to help show us how to play. If you want the actual games, let me know, I can type some of them up for you. For Family Fun, we just had a sock hop and served rootbeer floats, we've done bingo (no charge, otherwise considered gambling); Karaoke, and served chili dogs/frito pies. These were a big hit! Lots of our community businesses donated food, prizes, etc. I also recommended to our chair a game night and a craft night.
First let me tell you some topics I am interested in getting for our parents. There are so many good topics, I can't do them all in this year--I'll just have to do programs again next year!! Anyway, this is the info I sent to the other ladies..Good luck...Lisa
Communication
Bullying/Peer Pressure/Say "no"
Healthy Lifestyle
Personal Hygiene
Organizing
Crisis Support (done last month night before the anniversary of 9-11); but covers divorce, death, etc
Money management (scheduled for Nov)
Women's Self defense (scheduled for Oct 10)
College investing
Discipline
Protecting our children from predators (scheduled for Dec)
Single parenting
Stress Management/Anger control
There are so many great topics to chose from. First, go to your local universities' websites. Check out their Outreach dept or Child development dept for child related topics. ASK. It doesnt hurt to ask them to come speak. Then go to your local hospitals' outreach dept. Or sometimes its called Community services.
If you do a search using yahoo or whichever services, type in "outreach" and your city. It will give you hundreds of hits. You can narrow the search by typing "parent outreach". If you have a company called "Edward Jones" in your area, ask them to speak about financial matters. Or whatever financial/investing company you have. My local one keeps calling me to come
speak. Of course they want to push their services, but he's coming for free, possibly in Jan. You can also contact your local arts council, dance companies, local theatres. Many of them will come for a small fee. Sometimes free. I tried to get one for Christmas, but one had a conflict, and the other one is closed for a couple of weeks. But its worth a try! You can also try schoolshows.com for semi-professionals to come to your school for edu-tainment. They can range from $50 to $1k. I think Young Audiences is a nation wide company. I have earthballoon.com coming in Apr for $995 a day. The teachers are so excited. You can also check out madscience.org and scienceadventures.com. They are nationwide companies that do science experiments either in a gym or in each classroom--depending on how much money and time you have. Oh, and ask your local police dept to come do a safety program; and perhaps a CPR demo. Also check out your local Health Dept.'s outreach services. Ours wants to come talk!!
The Oct program didn't do as well as I hoped. I think part of the reason is that I didn't send out REMINDER that day. Many parents I spoke to said they just forgot--they really wanted to come. Other parents said they had this or that practice/game/etc to attend.
Hope all this inspires some of you!
Lisa @ Tx
