While participating in the Family Leaders for Ohio Schools Academy at the Ohio Statewide Family Engagement Center, Ohio parent Maggie developed a plan for a family game night to guide families in structured play activities that improve students’ social skills. Read more about her plan below.
Introduction
I’m a parent leader for Sidney City Schools, because I saw the need within my district to increase meaningful family and community engagement. Research shows that when families are actively involved in their children’s education, students are more likely to succeed academically and socially. I was interested in learning strategies to encourage stronger community, creating opportunities for families to engage and strengthening the partnership between school and families.
My proposed project is addressing a need for more family engagement opportunities with school support, specifically teaching and modeling social and emotional skills in a fun and inviting way during game play. Our school administration expressed their concern in seeing a lack of soft skills during recess play, such as children not understanding rules for specific games, turn taking, sportsmanship, etc. Teachers were taking recess time to teach these underdeveloped skills, but feel this would be a great learning opportunity to involve families in modeling and guiding their own children in these skills.
Goal
My goal is to host a Family Game Night in the Fall of 2026. At the game night, we’ll have staff & volunteers guide families in structured play activities that improve students’ social skills, such as turn-taking, cooperation, and sportsmanship. Our focus will be on games that help students and their parents practice these specific skills while modeling and talking explicitly about what they are learning while they play.
Expected Outcomes
Family Game Night provides valuable opportunities to strengthen:
- Social-emotional skills
- Family engagement
- School Culture
- School-home partnerships
We hope families gain confidence in teaching and modeling these social skills to their children and in turn the children will exhibit these skills in game play.
Potential Challenges
- Low Family Attendance – Some families may struggle to attend because of work schedules, transportation or extracurricular conflicts, so offering the event more than a one time event might be a future consideration.
- Student Behavior Challenges – Some students may struggle with waiting their turn, managing frustration and sharing materials but we can turn these into learning opportunities in real time at the event.
- Noise & Overstimulation – A crowded event may become loud, chaotic so we have considered offering games in different rooms and clear traffic flow to decrease noise and congestion.
- Lack of Materials or Funding – We may face challenge with having funds for specific games and providing snacks, but we plan to utilize low cost games and partner with the PTO for monetary assistance.
- Staff & Volunteer Availability – Teachers and staff may be unavailable after school hours, so we are planning to share responsibilities across teams and utilize additional community volunteers.
Next Steps
- Forming a planning team of teachers, PTO members and administrators.
- Selecting an event date, discussion for additional dates.
- Gathering games and materials, and consider take-home options and instructions.
- Creating family communication materials, including the invitations.
- Staff and volunteers will be assigned roles to support event facilitation and family engagement.
- Baseline teacher observations and family feedback tools will also be developed to measure growth in student social skills, participation, and school-family connection throughout the school year.