Parfaits anyone? SOLC #20

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Two Writing Teachers

We hosted a sweet parent/child event at school last night.  We invited students in grades 3rd-5th to come with a parent and read functional text.

We called it "Fun, Food and Following Directions."

Catchy, right?

At the start of the evening, I read aloud Chicks and Salsa and used my document camera to project a portion of the pictures on a big screen.  It was my first time reading the book, and now I know why it comes so highly recommended (Ole!).

We decided to have our students create a simple parfait.  The directions we wrote lead students to crush vanilla wafers, then layer those with vanilla pudding and whipped topping.  YUM!

There wasn't too much of a mess, and we had lots of great interactions between parents and children.  Some of the parfaits were more like blizzards, and some were total works of art.  I talked with two fifth graders about sedimentary rocks as I checked out their parfaits.

The best part of the evening came when four families were simply relaxing in the lunchroom, chatting.  We teachers continued passing out books to students and thanked other families for coming.  One mom from the chatting group jumped up and exclaimed that she felt like she was at a gathering, and they were very relaxed at school as they socialized.

My fellow teacher explained to her that being relaxed at school was exactly the reason we hold parent/child events.  We want our parents to be comfortable coming to school, and we want our students to see that we value them as part of our school community and as a part of their family.

Today we were all tired, but it was worth it!