Why Connector?
We all want for students to learn, grow, and be successful in school and in life. In order to accomplish this, families and schools must work together.
As a parent, do you often wonder what that means to you? Do you want to do what is best for your student, but you sometimes don't know what direction to turn or who to ask for direction?
If you said yes, you are in the right place. Community Outreach is here to serve as a resource to all families. If you feel unknowledgeable or disconnected, let's partner together and together, we can go from feeling unknowing to knowledgeable and from disconnected to connected.
Read aloud to your child daily
No one will say, I think I spent too much time with my children when they were young.” Alice Ozma, The Reading Promise
Spending time together while reading aloud helps to connect and create strong parent-child bonds, promotes healthy brain development, and helps kids to grow to be successful.
Children that are read to more often have improved language and listening skills, experience stronger emotional connections to their loved ones, and gain a lifelong love of reading.
Here are 10 key reasons to keep reading aloud to older kids:
- It builds vocabulary
- It improves comprehension
- It's wonderful for bonding
- It provides positive modeling
- It improves listening skills
- It's a way to discover the classics
- It helps with discussing difficult issues
- It's a way to introduce different genres
- It's a portal into your kids' interests
- It sparks curiosity and a thirst for learning
To learn more read: 10 Reasons to Read aloud to big kids too
For book Recommendations look here: The Read Aloud Family index of books
Choose a word of the year
“Choosing your guiding words can be a really wonderful activity to do together with your family – choose a word for the entire family and then have everyone select their own personal words as well. It’s always fun to see what everyone comes up with!”
Ideas to try using your word of the year.
- Create a work of art such as the word painted or a collage created using old newspapers and magazines
- Create an acrostic poem
Stay Connected
Another way to stay connected is by joining your school's parent group. In our district, the groups have different names, such as PTO and PAC, but the mission is generally the same. In a nutshell, a parent group is a group of parents and teachers that work together for the benefit of a school and the children being educated there.
Parent groups raise funds and spend them for the benefit of the school and children. Parent groups also collaborate and work on common issues.
In addition to working together for the benefit of your children, parent groups are a great way to get to know other parents and staff.
