Parents Info Evening - Please Help!

[Guest]

I teach a Reception/Year 1 class and we are holding a parents information evening next week to inform them about the curriculum, Letters and Sounds etc. In the past things have been done v formally but I am working hard to change this and my Head is really supportive. We want to explain about the importance of learning through play and first hand experiences. Anyway, I am planning to do a talk first and then take the parents into the classroom to try out some activities. Our theme next week is 'We're going on a bear hunt' so some of the ideas I have for the parents to try out (and the children during the week) are: build a cave for the bear using boxes or construction kits, re-write the story in small books, re-tell story into Easi-speak microphone, create collages to represent mud, snow etc, act out story using small world characters and tuff spots etc. I really need to show some of the Y1 parents the value of play and that their children are being extended, so what do people think. Does this sound OK? Has anyone got any fab ides for activities or any really good quotes for the presentation? Thanks in advance!

Kathryn

[mps09]

If you check out my thread 'just wanted to share' (sorry don't know how to make a link!) you will see how enthused both the parents and myself were after a slideshow of the children 'doing' stuff at our pre-school.

 

I've received comments from a couple of parents saying how great it was and how much they enjoyed by very impromptu comments about what the children were upto. You could make these quite 'learning based' perhaps. We had actually been looking at 'we're going on a bear hunt' too and I included photos of:-

 

the children in a cardboard box "here they are pretending to be the bear in the cave"

two children lining up some small shapes "what these children were actually doing was making a trail of chocolate drops to entice the crocodile out of the rive before they crossed in on their bear hunt"

playing in the sand "looking at the different patterns they could make on the bear hunt"

 

as our children are between 2-4 their learning is obviously going to be a bit different from a Y1's but you could plan something similar. It was very relaxed and not really planned learning opportunities as such but the parent's loved it all the same.

 

Hope this helps! good luck