About mid-October, our district has parent comference days. That usually consists of teachers going to school all day on a Thursday and then coming back for 3 hours of parent conferences that night. However, the following day, we have no students while we finish our parent comferencing for 4.5 hours. Thursday is long, but Friday is great.
Since nearly no one comes to the library for a parent conference, we decided to something a little more fun this year....hence, our "Angry Birds Family Night."
We picked Angry Birds because it is quite the phenomenon among students and adults alike. We also inherited a bunch of boxes decorated to look like pigs from the creative writing classes. They were just too cute to throw away.
They became the inspiration for our event. After we made the decision to have an Angry Birds theme, we needed to plan an event to appeal to all students. Since this was an evening of parent conferences, we knew parents would probably bring not only their high school child, but any other children they may have. Having said that, we didn't want to be a place where parents just dropped off their 4 year old and went to a meeting. We knew that would not be very safe. So we did decide that students under the age of 14 had to be accompanied by their high school sibling or a parent. That worked out well for us.
For proper inspiration, we turned to Pinterest. We found tons of Angry Birds themed ideas for our family night. To see our pinboard, go to this link http://pinterest.com/tahaneyj/angry-birds-resources/
After researching Pinterest, we decided on 7 different stations...
Angry Birds Toss Game
(bean bags bought at Costco, cups & candy for playing at Walmart, and pictures found on Pinterest)
Angry Birds Tournament
(brought our own iPads, Nooks borrowed from local Barnes & Noble)
Decorate an Angry Birds cookie
(sugar cookies purchased at Tom Thumb, decorating pieces and frosting at Walmart, directions found on Pinterest)
Angry Birds face/tattoo painting
(washable paint & brushes bought at Hobby Lobby)
Angry birds balloon crafts
(balloons purchased at Walmart, printables found on Pinterest)
Angry Birds cubes and color sheets
(printables found on Pinterest)
Barnes and Noble in Cedar Hill, TX
(community rep came and sold Angry Birds items; library received a cut of the proceeds.)
Next, we knew we needed help. There would be 7 stations, only 4 adults, and a multitude of kids. So we appealed to our older students and offered community service hours to help. The cosmetology students volunteered to face paint. In addition, we had 15 other juniors and seniors volunteer to help facilitate each area. We even had 3 of them volunteer to wear one of the Angry Birds costumes we borrowed (old Halloween costumes) and parade around the library for a more festive atmosphere.
We planned for 300 people, and we ran out of supplies 2 hours into our 3 hour event. Note for next year...only plan a 2 hour event! We were exhausted, but we believe everyone had a fun evening.
