I'm looking for a fun activity or activities to present to 3-5th grade parents and students at Family Fun Night. The activities can be from any subject area. Any ideas??

[jane]

Our school has a family book club. Children choose a title from a select group offered by our Reading Dept. Then the child and parent reads it at home over a 2-3 week period. Families come together at school one night to discuss the book. Interesting to see the different perspectives from parents and children and the different families.
We also have had Writing night. Families bring in a special photograph from the family album. Each member writes their own piece about the photograph and then share their drafts.
We also came up with old patents for inventions from a library book. Some of the ideas are incredible. Children and their parents had to figure out the contraption and explain how it worked. Lots of laughs and fathers loved this one!
Math games and brain teasers are also fun to work on as a family. Hope this helps! Have fun!

[psc]

Here are some ideas my school has used:

We had lots of Potato Guns made of PVC pipes (one larger and one smaller that fits inside the larger one) that the parents and kids shot outside. A local grocery donated the potatoes. The science lesson was on air pressure...and it was a lot of fun!

Bubbles - Kids make geometric shapes out of pipe cleaners and then dip them into a soapy solution and see what bubbles they create. This one was done inside, but in our art room. It was a mess; we needed a mop afterwards.

There was some activity about diapers...measuring how much water different diaper brands absorb. (I wasn't directly involved in this one, but I remember it was really popular).

Then, one of the teachers ran an activity about solids and liquids. They made "slime" or something like that and all the kids came away with a ziplock bag of the green goop.

[Miller]

For Math and Science night, we made goo (glue and corn starch - I think); we had tangrams and the shapes for them to make using the tangrams.

For Reading night, we had a word find in a phone book; also, use newspapers or magazines and have the kids find nouns, verbs, or adjectives, cut out the words and make sentences. You can do file folder games and computer software and even online sites, check eduplace.com

[Patches]

This is a cool web site- they can make a bookmark- I don't know how much printing you want to do that night- at least check it out-

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/kids/bookmarkfactory/

For our "grandfriend's day" last spring- I made up a simple mad-lib for the kids/grandparents to do together.

[Tylana]

At one of our fun nights the most popular activity was a sight word twister. The teacher had taped different leveled sight words to a mat in the gym. THen they had the children play twister using the words. You could do this with synonyms, antonyms, suffixes, or any skill that fits into your grade level.

Also, you could play a game like WHere in the world is Carmen San Diego. You could make a large world map or just use one already made. Then give clues that the children have to follow to find the treasure. At the end you could have a treat for the kids.

Hope these help.